Trading Summary (April 08, 2002)

The oil & gas sector, up about 1.1% couldn’t counter plus-1% losses by the conglomerates, golds, techs on top of a whopping 557.6-point or 5.6% slaughter of the utilities, paced by shares of BCE, which hit a new 52-week low amid concerns over the Montreal-based media-communications giant’s business plans. By day’s end, the Toronto Stock Exchange was off 34.51 points at 7,747.6. The base metal stocks managed to claw out a 19.66-point gain to end at 4,640.4.

Barrick Gold grabbed the top spot among mining issues falling 60 to $28.10 on just more than 2.2 million shares. Next closest were Placer Dome, down 9 to $$18.41, Kinross Gold, off 4 pennies to $2.01, and Bema Gold, which gained 2 to 94 all with about 1.5 million shares traded.

Teck Cominco’s B series was the most actively traded base metal miner falling 14 to $14.70 on a volume of just more than 1 million shares. One of just a handful of advancers, Noranda climbed 26 to $18.01 on 814,414 shares. On Monday, Metallica Resources released the latest results from drilling on its El Morro copper-gold project in Chile. Metallica shares rebounded to end at $1.55, 30 2 off their previous close, after falling about 25% earlier in the day.

Canada’s junior exchange dropped at the open and slowly drifted lower through out the session. The S&P-CDNX Composite Index fell 7.89 points, or 0.7% to close at 1168.61.

Peruvian Gold topped the most actively traded chart surging 11 to close at 55 on 950,850 shares. The junior took its final steps as a base metal explorer by announcing a merger with Toronto-listed Bradstone Equity Partners, CDNX-listed Glenex Industries and Stockscape.com Technologies. The new entity will be called “Bradstone Equity Partners, Inc.” and focus on merchant banking.

New Blue Ribbon Resources added 2 to close at 10 on 835,000 shares. Shear Minerals, Marum Resources, Montello Resources and new Blue Ribbon recently entered into an exploration option agreement that will result in the Hippogrif anomaly being drilled in association with Shear and Marum’s current drill program in the Birch Mountains of northeastern Alberta. The Hippogif anomaly is located in the northwestern part of the New Blue Ribbon/Montello Legend block near the Shear/Marum Birch Mountains diamond project. Marum ended the day up 2 at 12 on 560,000 shares, while Montello lost 1 to close at 17 on just over 200,000 shares. Shear ended the day at 30, down 1 on light volume.