Trading Summary (March 21, 2003)

Friday was another good day for the Toronto Stock Exchange, with the TSX Composite index up 60.32 points to close at 6,535.90. The rearrangement of Middle Eastern politics that took place during the North American trading day was bad for both gold and energy stocks, but the rest of the equity market took off.

The gold price also took a pounding, from a US$333.50 London fix in the European afternoon to a Comex close of US$325.75 in the North American one. That was reflected in a 3.87-point drop in the TSX Gold index, to 150.64, a loss of 2.5% on the day.

In that environment, most of the individual gold equities lost ground. Kinross Gold was the most active, with 4.6 million shares moving, and it took one of the heaviest hits of the day, falling 52 to $8.05. Barrick Gold saw 3.9 million shares trade, and was down 33 at $21.90, and also active was Placer Dome, which, at $13.40, was down 9.

The worst performance of the day was by Iamgold, which fell 50 to $5.60. The company announced 2002 earnings of US$5.5 million on revenues of US$89.8 million, which were generally in line with expectations, but the company was caught in the gold price downdraft.

Off the gold index, Eldorado Gold was off 11 at $1.89, with 4.7 million shares traded. Eldorado debuts on the TSX Golds on Monday.

The base metals were having none of that misery. The TSX Metals and Mining index was up 0.74 at 128.97 points. The big winner was Ivanhoe Mines, which rose 12 to $3.15 on a volume of just under half a million shares. Another stock having a good day was Cameco, which closed at $39.58, up $1, and Noranda rose 29 to $13.29.

The larger nickel producers all fell back. Inco was the most active of the base-metal issues, with 1.5 million shares traded. It fell 26 to $29.34. Falconbridge was off 14 at $17.36 and Sherritt International backed up 4 to $4.45. Their smaller rival, LionOre Mining, rose 11 to $5.70.

Canada’s junior exchange continued to chase the bear as advancers lost to decliners 226 to 295. The S&P-TSX Venture Exchange composite index shed 4.60 points, or 0.43%, and closed at 1,054.70 with 34.3 million shares traded.

Spider Resources was the day’s volume leader with 6.5 million shares traded. The junior and joint venture partner, over the counter-listed, KWG Resources have launched a 1,000 metre diamond drilling program on their Spider #3 base metal prospect in the James Bay Lowlands of Northern Ontario. Spider lost a penny and closed at 13.

IMA Exploration tacked on 4 and closed at $1.04 with almost 841,000 shares traded. Soil sampling has identified a highly anomalous area at its Navidad project in Patagonia, Argentina, that measures 1,200-by-500 metres with values consistently greater than 2 grams silver per tonne. These high silver values in soil samples correlate very well with anomalous copper (greater than 50 ppm) values. The soil samples were taken at 50 metre intervals along lines spaced 200 metres apart. IMA plans to increase the density and size of this soil grid in order to better define drill targets in combination with geological mapping, rock sampling, trenching, and geophysics.

International Coromandel Resources lost 3 and finished the day at 33 on 437,000 shares. The company recently completed a private placement financing worth $375,000. The proceeds will be used to drill the company’s Santa Gertrudis property in Mexico. The project hosts a number of near surface oxide gold targets as well as several deep Carlin-type targets.