Vancouver Stock Exchange Volume boiling over

The Vancouver market has literally come to a full boil with trading activity approaching levels only seen during the early 1980s. But the present situation didn’t happen overnight. Volume increases have been incremental in nature and the earlier volatility has all but disappeared. Obviously we are dealing with a much more mature market, one which is getting larger by the year.

By presstime the vse index was ahead 3.7 points to 1761.6 and trading volume was extremely heavy, indicating another record day. Yesterday’s volume was 24.7 million shares. The highest volume in recent years occurred March 27 when the turnover was 27.5 million and that record probably won’t last long.

Among the big movers today was International Thunderwood which jumped 40 cents to $1.20. The company recently announced that $500,000 of a proposed equity offering will go towards mineral exploration on its properties. Following closely behind was Cornucopia Resources which climbed 38 cents to $10.25. The company is planning an extensive drill program on its Ivanhoe gold property, in Nevada, in mid-April. Kyle Resources was 15 cents stronger at 36 cents . It recently issued shares to settle outstanding debts and will be raising money through a private placement for general corporate purposes.

There were a number of big winners over our report period, including Golden North which shot up $3.45 to $7.75. Just yesterday Mascot Gold Mines announced that drilling had extended reserves in its South Pit area onto Golden North’s Horsefly and Terrier claims. Mascot holds the ground under option.

Cornucopia shot up $3.62 to $9.87 over the period and Golders Resources ended the week $3.33 stronger at $6.38. The company has a gold property in Arizona and is using a proprietary leach process to extract the metal. (These types of situations seem to be coming out of the woodwark lately.) Black Swan, which is involved with Sydney- based Dominion Mining in the exploration of several gold properties in western Australia, was $1.51 better at $7.38. Balcor was the most active with a turnover of 1.5 million for a 57 cents increase to $1.32. Balcor is planning its Phase Two exploration program on its property near Lynn Lake, Man., where high grade gold values were encountred in an earlier drill program.

New listings for the week included: Rojoll Explorations, Zenith Metals Recovery, Transglobe Resources (formerly Starmark Resources), Balsam Resources (formerly Southrn Lights), Golden Band Resources (formerly Iori Enterprises), Canadian Venture Corp., Zebec Resources and MI Software (formerly Edgewater Resources). VSE Short Positions