Venture edges down Nov. 7-11

Junior mining stocks maintained their slight downward trajectory in the Nov. 7-11 trading period, with the S&P/ TSX Venture Composite Index slipping 8.7 points to end at 1,641.31 points. As in recent weeks, volume remained light at an average of 84 million shares traded daily.

CB Gold was the most active trader after the British Columbia Securities Commission forced the company to restate assay results from the first drill hole completed at its Vetas gold project in Colombia. CB restated the results using several top cuts, as a long interval of 114.98 metres grading 7.57 grams gold per tonne contained a small high-grade section of 2.09 metres grading 316.67 grams gold. With a 15-gram-gold-per-tonne top cut, the intersection is reduced to 114.98 metres grading 1.2 grams gold. Shares of CB Gold fell 33¢ following the disclosure on Nov. 8 from $1.71 to $1.38, before climbing back to end the week at $1.52.

Charging ahead as the trading period’s biggest value gainer was Lumina Copper, owner of the promising Taca Taca porphyry-copper-gold-molybdenum project in Argentina. Lumina’s largest shareholder is Vancouver resource magnate Ross Beaty, and Taca Taca is the last of 10 projects acquired by the company in 2003 amidst a downturn in the sector and low metals prices. It sold the rest of the projects for a total of about $1.2 billion in the years up to 2008, and restarted work on Taca Taca in mid-2010. A 40,000-metre drill program is currently ongoing and Lumina expects to release an updated resource estimate for the project in the next few weeks. According to its 2010 annual report, Lumina plans on marketing the project for sale by the end of 2011. Shares of the company gained 55¢ during the week to end at $9.90, and are up from $3.16 a year ago.

Having a tougher go of things is junior gold explorer Canaco Resources, which fell another 47¢ over the week to close at $1.39, a fresh 52-week low. The stock is down from a high of $6.45 in February. Canaco’s nine drill rigs are completing roughly 11,000 metres of drilling per month at its flagship Magambazi gold project in Tanzania with the hope of compiling a maiden resource estimate there by the end of first-quarter 2012. Canaco’s market cap has declined from over $1 billion earlier this year to $265 million at present, despite the company having $120 million in its kitty and no debt. A preliminary economic assessment for Magambazi is expected in mid-2012.

 Rounding things off as the trading period’s biggest percentage gainer was Sino Vanadium, which rose 257.1% after announcing plans to take the company private for 27¢ a share. President Liu Bingqiang and director Ma Zhaoyang, along with eight other shareholders, already control 73.9% of the company’s shares. Sino Vanadium controls the Daquan property, an advanced-stage vanadium play in China’s Shaanxi province.