Goldcorp Is Back and Spending: Could West Red Lake Gold Mines Be Next?

Goldcorp is fresh off an announced transaction of $520M for Kaminak Gold, which is a big win for the industry. The company has been quietly putting dollars in juniors, like $16M in Gold Standard Ventures, and there could be more to come. In this article, Resource Maven Gwen Preston discusses possible target West Red Lake Gold Mines and how this company is shaping up to take advantage of the initial turnaround in the market.

A million ounces of high-grade gold in Ontario, open for expansion. A management team that has done it before. A major miner as joint venture partner. A potential new discovery near the kind of structural intersection that can carry considerable gold in this part of the world. And cash in the bank to go back and drill test it. West Red Lake Gold Mines Inc. (RLG:CSNX/ West Red Lake Gold Mines Inc. (NASDAQ:HYLKF) has the right property, people, structure and plan to potentially hit a home run in a gold market looking for high grades in good jurisdictions.

RLG is headed up by Thomas Meredith. Merediths last company was VG Gold. He took the helm there when it was a broken company with a $3 million market capitalization. He cleaned up the management and board, and then focused on advancing and derisking the companys four projects, which were all historic mines in the Timmins gold camp in Ontario.

Under his leadership VG grew its resource base from 60,000 oz to 2 million oz, completed two PEAs, worked one project through a joint venture with Goldcorp Inc. (G:TSX/GG:NYSE), got permitting underway, and attracted Rob McEwen in as an investor, who took a 40% stake in VG through his company Lexam Exploration. About 18 months later Lexam and VG merged. By then, VG Gold had a market cap of $200 million.

Now Meredith is working to do it again. Continue reading "Goldcorp Is Back and Spending: Could West Red Lake Gold Mines Be Next?"

When Will Uranium Emerge from the Shadow of Fukushima?

Joe Reagor of ROTH Capital Partners explains the factors that have kept uranium spot prices down, how much longer they will be in effect, and why uranium should be on investors' radar screens today. He also discusses four uranium companies that are in position to benefit from the looming uranium shortage.

The Energy Report: How do you see the big picture for uranium? Spot prices have dropped recently. Are you still bullish?

Joe Reagor: It's a matter of time horizon. Many analysts, myself included, believed that the uranium price recovery was going to happen in 2014. Then when 2014 didn't happen, we thought 2015. Then when 2015 didn't happen, we said 2016. Here we are in 2016, and uranium is back under $28/pound ($28/lb) again. The recovery isn't happening.

Nuclear Water

There are two parts to why we're not seeing a spot uranium recovery. First is the uranium spot market has been rather tight in terms of overall percentage of production, and there have been some nuclear plant closures in addition to shutdowns in Japan after Fukushima. Add to that a lot of production growth already build into pipelines that has come on-line and ramping up production and creating a larger amount of spot uranium to be sold into a weak market. Cameco Corp.'s (CCO:TSX; CCJ:NYSE) Cigar Lake is an example of that. So we're getting this extra pressure on the spot market, but if you look at contract pricing, it has remained relatively stronger, in the low $40s. Producers are making decisions based on the contract price, not the current spot price. So there is a disconnect between spot and contract pricing. Continue reading "When Will Uranium Emerge from the Shadow of Fukushima?"

Gold And Silver Companies With The Potential To Move The Needle

The two times mining companies add the most value are upon first discovery and when they are nearing development and production. Joe Reagor of ROTH Capital Partners focuses on the latter group, and in this interview with The Gold Report, he discusses a handful of gold and silver companies poised to move up the value curve even if gold and silver don't go up.

Gold Six-Month Chart

The Gold Report: What's your macro outlook for gold?

Joe Reagor: International debt concerns are going to drive gold this year into next year, in our view. A number of countries with mounting debt loads can't continue to pay the interest portion of their debt, let alone ever pay it back. Total world debt continues to increase year after year. If the solution is for everybody to print the money that they need to pay everybody else back with, that's going to be a massive inflationary event, which would bode well for gold.

TGR: Silver has been up dramatically vis-a-vis gold. Do you expect that trend to continue? Continue reading "Gold And Silver Companies With The Potential To Move The Needle"

Precious Metals Every Bit as Explosive as Secretariat at the Belmont Stakes

The charts tell the story, says precious metals expert Michael Ballanger, adding that the mining and metals market have the forward momentum of Secretariat as he clinched the Triple Crown.

Today's missive is going to be exceedingly "chart-infected," because many times a picture is worth one thousand words, especially in the case of the precious metals markets these days. I put on a 2% hedge prior to the FOMC meetings and the Wednesday press release and have since removed it, taking a small hit versus the mindboggling leap in my GDXJ position and associated advances in the juniors (KAM.V over $2). That's the beauty of a "hedge" versus a "short," and that is precisely what I have been thinking since the COT moved above 200,000 Commercial net shorts a few weeks back, with the gold and silver prices refusing to retrace.

One look at the chart below and you are immediately struck by the "shock and awe" campaign of "no corrections," where the market doesn't allow traders to buy back their favorite mining positions at prices representing only the meagerest of percentage pullbacks. In fact, after nearly 40 years of trading the miners, I have never ever seen a market with such awesome power behind it that is truly such a wonder to behold. The HUI has exploded out of the post-FOMC gate like Secretariat at the Belmont Stakes in 1973. (If you ever want to see an incredible feat by a horse, watch the Youtube clip of the race that clinched the first Triple Crown in 25 years AND was won by an incredible 25 lengths.) Just as that horse left the pack at the halfway point of the race, precious metals are massively outperforming the SP by a vast margin, and are forcing the money managers to be dragged into the market, teeth clenched and fingers clawing the ground. Continue reading "Precious Metals Every Bit as Explosive as Secretariat at the Belmont Stakes"

Are We or Are We Not in a New Gold Bull Market?

Technical analyst Jack Chan has examined the charts and says that if we are in a new bull market, prices in both gold and gold equities should begin to pull back and consolidate soon.

As suggested in our previous analysis, we need to see a couple of things happening in order to welcome a potential new bull market:

#1. COT data to return to bull market values.
#2. Gold price to exceed the 2015 high at $1,302.

Nobody can predict when this will happen, but we can prepare by looking at the past bull and bear markets so that we can recognize a new bull market if and when it materializes.

The Bear Market From 1981 to 2001

Gold Spot Price

After topping above $700 in 1981, gold lost more than half of its value in just over a year, followed by two sharp bear market rallies, and then died a slow death over the next 12 years. Continue reading "Are We or Are We Not in a New Gold Bull Market?"