Good afternoon
markets are feeling vulnerable…COVID-situation in Europe seems to be never ending, China having the foot on the brakes, inflation outlook mixed at best, semiconductur shortage affecting some industries, and now this useless Suez-story, which is interrupting 11% of wodl trade…and tax-hikes in the States increasingly in focus…
Equities are weaker across the borad, base metals as well…investors having to push recovery expectations - certainly for Europe - out by anotehr few month! And China is trying to dampen commodity prices - not helping base metals today, which are seeing some profit-taking anyway because of the strong US$. I am not becoming bearrish, but in all tehse markets we might come down a bit further, before we can go up again.
Gold is holding surprisingly strong in the context of a strong US$ and never ending ETF-outflows.
Durable Good Orders yesterday not good in the States - but labor market numbers today were quite good.
Foran Mining - landed a coup by attracting highly regarded ESG-expert Jean Rogers to it´s board! Institutional investors do like this kind of news !
Osino - my other Canadian investment is extremely active this year. Infill-drilling, what they call brownfield-drilling, and some wildcard drilling to test completely untested targets for up to 75.000m this year, spending 17 mill Can$ on exploration of their Namibian gold project. The maiden resource should come out over the next month or so - some people are expecting/hoping for 2 mill Oz, which would be very impressive at this early stage. We should see some numbers within a month, or latest by the end of May. Grades will be important here as well. There project has been shaping up as a large tonnage/low grade deposit ( even though they have drilled some nice intersections recently ) - average grade of 1g or 1.2g is making a big difference here, especially as the gold price has retreated somewhat from recent highs! Depending on the outcome of the maiden resource , m&a might become a reality for Osino - the North American market has seen quite a few smaller- and midsized deals recently, and strong cash flow for many companies is making them look at growth options.
Chalice - has done some work now on the area to the North of their exisiting find. EM as well as soil sampling has delivered numerous , highly interesting targets. Those are in a forestry reserve, and so far, the comnpany has been allowed some basice exploration, without any drilling. Approvals here would be very positive for the stock. In any case, CHN have given strong indications once again, that they might be up to something big!
Have a nice evening!
WS