Trading Summary (July 24, 2002)

A day of heavy trading ended in a rally for the Toronto Stock Exchange Wednesday, with the TSX Composite index jumping 221.05 points, or 3.6% of value, to 6,382.13 points.

The gains were shared across the market, with the golds and the base metals both rising. The TSX Metals and Mining index outpaced the market, gaining 5.28 points to close at 120.59, up 4.6%; the TSX Gold index was behind the broader market, with a gain of 3.25 points to 161.69.

There was some heavy buying in the battered gold sector, all the same, with 7.6 million Barrick Gold shares moving as the senior producer picked up 20 to close at $23.05. Kinross Gold, which has traded heavily since it announced a merger deal with TVX Gold and Echo Bay Mines, saw 5.3 million shares traded, and was up 11 at $2.84. TVX and Echo Bay were both unchanged, at $17.70 and $1.44.

Big gainers in the gold sector included Iamgold, which added 21 to close at $4.90, and Meridian Gold, closing 83 higher at $3.10.

Woes continued for the silver producers, though, as Pan American Silver shed $1 for a closing price of $9.65, and off-index silver producer Wheaton River Minerals lost 3 to close at $1.10.

On the base metal side, Inco moved up 55 to $26.95 on a volume of 2.7 million shares. Crosstown rival Falconbridge was thinly traded — just over 70,000 shares — but added 24 to finish at $16.24. Teck Cominco B-series shares made the day’s most dramatic recovery, ending the day $2.40 higher at $12.65, a gain of 23%.

The TSX Venture Exchange didn’t fare as well as its big brother, with the composite index off 25.08 points at 1,022.07.

Kensington Resources saw some profit-taking on Tuesday’s news that it had recovered a 3.4-carat diamond in a sample taken from a large-diameter drill hole on the Fort a la Corne property in Saskatchewan. The stock fell back 13 to close at $1.15.

The most active issue was a none-too-active junior, Mishibishu Gold, which saw 1.7 million shares traded as it moved up 5 to finish at 10. Parent Windarra Minerals sold its 40% holding in Mishibishu to five private investors earlier in the month. In April, Mishibishu had concluded an agreement to take up Windarra’s interest in the Tulks South base metal project in central Newfoundland by spending just under $1.4 million on exploration.

International Wayside Gold Mines was another active issue, adding 3 to close at 22 on a volume of 884,000 shares.

Anooraq Resources announced two drill holes on its Rietfontein platinum-group-metal prospect in the Bushveld camp of South Africa had intersected rocks identified as the Platreef horizon, one of the mineralized horizons in the Bushveld gabbro intrusion. Anooraq rose 4 to finish at 83.