Trading Summary (December 16, 2003)

Toronto’s gold stocks took it on the chin on Tuesday, as the yellow metal slipped US$1.50 to US$407.20 in New York. The gold subindex dropped 6.52 points, or nearly 3% of its value, to finish at 219.83. The diversified miners continued 2.56 points higher to 211.22, just shy of the index’s 52-week high. Overall, the S&P/TSX composite index gained 55.14 points to make 7,987.25.

Mid-tier producer GoldCorp end the day as the TSX’s second most active issue, dropping a buck to $21.20 with just short of 7.7 million shares changing hands. On Tuesday, GoldCorp declared its first regular monthly dividend for 20004 of 1.5 per share. The dividend is payable to shareholders of record at the close of business on Jan. 6. The company also recently announced plans for a special dividend of 10 per share. That dividend reflects the miner’s recent decision to sell off its gold hoard.

Canada’s big three gold producers led the way south with losses across the board. Kinross Gold was the busiest with 4.6 million shares finding their way 43 lower to $10.15. Barrick Gold and Kinross Gold both put in plus-2% losses. Barrick ended at 28.30, with Placer at $21.68.

Among the diversified miners Sherritt International was spared a ho-hum day thanks to a late run up. The issue ended 47, or 7.3%, higher at a new 52-week high of 6.87. Sherritt recently arranged to convert the multiple-voting shares held by its chairman, Ian Delaney, into restricted voting shares of the class that trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The conversion leaves Sherritt with a single class of voting shares, which the company will propose to redesignate as common shares at its next annual meeting.

On Tuesday, Reuters reported that Falconbridge plans a second round of contract talks with unionized technical and clerical workers at its Sudbury, Ontario nickel operation for Wednesday. Talks are already underway with production and maintenance workers at the facility. Existing contracts expire at the end of February. Shares in Falconbridge ended 42 higher at $27.81.

Canada’s junior exchange continued its Christmas sell-off with advancing stocks loosing to declining stocks 400 to 476. The S&P-TSX Venture Exchange composite index lost 1.88 points, or 0.11% and closed at 1,659.11 with 66.5 million shares traded.Majestic Gold tumbled 77 and closed at 54 with 2.27 million shares traded. Assay results from Majestic’s recently completed 4-hole drill program at the Ceske Brezovo prospect in Slovakia failed to return any significant gold mineralization.

Majestic was attempting to expand on two significant near surface gold zones discovered by the Slovakian Government during a regional exploration program in 2000. This program culminated in a shallow drill program that returned intersections of 51.5 grams gold per tonne over 14 metres and 3.1 grams per tonne gold over 16 metres. Both of these holes were reported to be open at depth.

Ontzinc lost a penny and closed at 22.5 with 829,309 shares changing hands. The company recently proposed a private placement of up to $4 million through the sale of up to 13 million flow-through units at a price of $0.30 per unit. Each unit is to be comprised of one flow-through common share and one-half of a flow-through common share purchase warrant. Each whole warrant entitles the holder to acquire a flow-through share for a period of two years from the date of issuance, exercisable at a price of $0.35 per share. Proceeds of the private placement will be used for exploration work on the Company’s properties in Gays River, Nova Scotia and Southwestern Ontario.

JNR Resources closed the day down 3.5 to 26 with 716,735 shares traded. The company recently optioned its Moore Lake and Lazy Edward Bay uranium properties to International Uranium These properties occur in the Athabasca Basin of northern Saskatchewan. International Uranium stands to earn a 51% interest on Moore Lake by spending $2.2 million over a two-year period. International Uranium will have the option to earn a further 24% interest in the property by spending $2.2 million over years three and four. In addition, IUC can earn a 75% interest in JNR’s Lazy Edward Bay project through expenditures of $500,000 over two years. JNR and International Uranium are planning to initiate a 5,000 metre, 15 hole, winter diamond drilling program on the Moore Lake project within the next couple of weeks. The program will initially focus on following up the uranium mineralization intersected to date on the Maverick zone. The best intercept to date was from drill hole ML-25 which returned 0.62 per cent U308 over 9.1 meters, including a 4.8 meter interval of 1.2 percent U308 and including a high-grade interval of 12 per cent U308 over 0.4 metres.