This item is part of Stockwatch's value added news feed and is only available to Stockwatch subscribers.

Here is a sample of this item:

by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Wednesday was a discouraging 30-74-161. The TSX Venture Exchange fell four points to 984 while polished diamond prices were flat. Patrick Evans's Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. (MPV), down six cents to $5.59 on 28,000 shares, has been quiet but it is busy behind the scenes. Mr. Evans has promised to complete a $370-million financing for a Gahcho Kue mine by the end of the year. Keeping that promise is critical; Mountain Province and De Beers Canada tout a late 2016 start-up date, so construction will have to start soon. Spiro Kletas's Big North Graphite Corp. (NRT) lost one-half cent to 7.5 cents on 1.58 million shares. Big North, a graphite miner in Mexico, has agreed to become a little piece of Blair Way's Flinders Resources Ltd. (FDR: $0.91), a graphite miner in Sweden, through a friendly merger.

Richard Mazur's Alto Ventures Ltd. (ATV), unchanged at 5.5 cents on 1,000 shares, has begun work on its GEFA and Fisher diamond properties in Northern Saskatchewan. The company will spend a month collecting 200 till samples on the two properties, which Mr. Mazur touts as being adjacent PK-150, a diamondiferous kimberlite found last year at Pikoo by North Arrow Minerals Inc. (NAR: $0.55). Mr. Mazur has a liberal notion of "adjacent." The GEFA claim block shares a border with Pikoo and is just 10 kilometres east of PK-150, but five kilometres of ground separates the Fisher claims from North Arrow's property and most of the ground is more than 15 kilometres west of PK-150. The area garnered notice last fall when North Arrow recovered 23 diamonds larger than a 0.85-millimetre sieve in 210 kilograms of PK-150 drill core. Those diamonds suggest a diamond content of 1.3 carats per tonne, by far the best result from a Saskatchewan kimberlite. Mr. Mazur, Alto's CEO, is a geologist but he has been primarily involved with promoting plays, not exploring them. He says he was a member of the management team of Canamax Resources Inc. when it discovered three important gold mines, but he was more of a water boy than the star quarterback: he was a business development analyst, assistant secretary and he handled investor relations for the company from 1985 to 1991, during which time Canamax's stock fell to 26 cents from over $14.

The remainder is available to Stockwatch subscribers.
Sign-up for a FREE 30-day Stockwatch subscription and SEE NO ADS