Vancouver Stock Exchange Rhodes active in Arizona, B.C.

Vancouver market players are pulling in their horns, keeping their powder dry, or sitting on the sidelines. These euphemisms roughly translate to being plain scared of putting their money in the market. One Vancouver mining executive, with his company’s share price off 30% after releasing good drilling results, half-jokingly said he had spent the morning hiding under his desk and if he could have, would have crawled under the carpet. Not a happy time for market players who have already spent their money and sit watching their stocks go on sale.

Doug Hurst, mining analyst at McDermid St. Lawrence, commented that this is the time to be picking away at some of the bargains rather than buying when the hype is flying. He specifically likes some of the players in the Stikine Arch region of northwestern British Columbia.

It does appear that the free fall in the indices has abated for the time being. The Composite Index was virtually unchanged at the 540 level while the Resource Index rebounding over 16 points to 607.45 by market close, Oct. 23.

A bright spot in this otherwise lacklustre market was provided by Consolidated Rhodes, which reached a high of $1.76 before settling at $1.42 for a gain of 27 cents on the week. The company is active on a number of properties including the Gold Basin and the Cyclopic in Mohave Cty., Ariz., and the Copper Canyon property in the Galore Creek area of northwestern British Columbia.

Toltec Resources, Rhodes’ partner on the two Arizona properties, was also up. It jumped 35 cents to reach $1.05.

American Fibre and Silver Butte Resources settled down over the week after releasing good drilling results from their SIB claims in the Eskay Creek area last week. Fibre dropped 4 cents to 74 cents while Silver Butte rose a nickel to 75 cents.

Eurus Resources was up 14 cents, closing at $1.09. The company recently released a 13-ft. intersection on its Albino Lake property grading 0.96 oz. gold per ton. The hole was testing for the strike extent of the Eskay Creek 21C zone on to the claim gap controlled by Eurus.

Moondust Ventures did not fare well over the week, dropping 31 cents to finish at 49 cents. The company recently released deep and relatively narrow copper intersections grading in the 0.1% range from its Webb property, in the Mount Milligan area of central British Columbia.

Chutine Resources gained a dime, closing at 49 cents. The first two holes of a 20-hole drill program returned wide intersects of copper- gold mineralization which the company believes could increase property reserves substantially. The property is in the Sonora province of Mexico and has estimated reserves of 15.7 million tons grading 1% copper.

Island-Arc Resources was off 2 cents finishing the period at 36 cents after completing the initial phase of drilling on its Lockwood volcanogenic massive sulphide property near Everett, Wash. The drilling returned a number of good copper-zinc-gold- silver intersects with assays still pending on some of the holes. The project is a joint venture with Formosa Resources.