TSX Venture rebounds, Oct. 17-21

The S&P/TSX Venture Composite Index recovered 17.55 points, or 2.3%, to a 790.57-point close, after three weeks of declines. Spot gold prices rose US$15.43 to US$1,266.46 per oz., despite a possible U.S. interest rate hike in December, while Comex copper prices shed US2¢ to US$2.09 per lb. copper.

Abitibi Royalties rose 98¢ to $8.44 per share after disclosing that Yamana Gold’s wholly owned subsidiary, Brio Gold, intends to distribute purchase rights to its shareholders as a dividend in-kind. Abitibi, which owns 3.5 million shares in Yamana, could receive purchase rights in connection with the offering, and plans to announce a decision on whether it will participate or sell its rights when more information is available. Abitibi holds a 3% net smelter return royalty (NSR) on the eastern part of Agnico Eagle Mines and Yamana’s Canadian Malartic gold mine, including an NSR on the project’s Odyssey North gold discovery.

Junior explorer Macarthur Minerals saw 12.7 million shares traded before closing up 2¢ to 8¢ after finding lithium during a shallow auger drilling program at its Stonewall project in the Lida Valley, Nevada. The 22.1 sq. km property is in a basin next to the Clayton Valley, which hosts North America’s only producing lithium mine, Albemarle’s Silver Peak lithium mine. The nine-hole drill program sediment samples graded between 34.6 ppm lithium and up to 145.5 lithium.

Filo Mining, a spin-out of Lukas Lundin’s NGEx Resources, gained 60¢ to $2.10 per share after reporting on Oct. 11 initial metallurgical results from its flagship Filo del Sol copper-gold-silver project straddling the border between Argentina and Chile. Bottle roll tests on drill cuttings from the three zones within the deposit shows copper and gold recoveries from oxide samples at 95.1% and 93.2%, whereas test work on a mixed-silver zone indicates “good extractions of silver, gold and copper by cyanidation, at the expense of high cyanide and lime consumption.” Sequential leach tests on a copper oxide zone provided 94% and 87% copper and gold recoveries.

Shares of Avino Silver and Gold Mines rose 28¢ to $2.64 on the back of the firm’s third-quarter production results at its operations near Durango, Mexico. Lower recoveries from mining a new zone at its Avino silver-gold-copper mine, combined with lower grades at its San Gonzalo silver-gold mine, resulted in a 16% drop in equivalent silver production to 649,841 tonnes, compared to third-quarter results last year. A resource update at the company’s Bralorne gold property near Gold Bridge, B.C., saw a 53% and 62% increase in measured and indicated tonnes when compared to the 2012 estimate. Resources for the deposit stand at 247,773 measured and indicated tonnes of 9.36 grams per tonne gold, and 329,786 inferred tonnes of 6.24 grams gold.