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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

New York spot gold closed down $2.20 to $1,208.90 Thursday, falling as the U.S. dollar rose with North American stock markets. Macquarie Bank says gold has the potential to move higher this year, the opposite of predictions by Barclays Bank and Deutsche Bank, which both say it will go lower. In Canada, the TSX Venture Exchange added 3.84 points to 687.48, while the TSX Gold Index lost 3.26 points to 158.93.

Canadian gold miners had a down day. Goldcorp Inc. (G) lost 44 cents to $23.37, Detour Gold Corp. (DGC) slipped 11 cents to $10.89, Yamana Gold Inc. (YRI) fell 12 cents to $5.01 and Iamgold Corp. (IMG) fell 19 cents to $3.51.

Greg Chamandy's Richmont Mines Inc. (RIC) slipped seven cents to $3.96 on 390,000 shares. The stock has climbed from $1.20 this past summer, thanks to steadily improving production at the company's three gold mines in Canada. It has two in Quebec and one in Ontario, but the majority of the 90,000 ounces of gold Richmont produced last year, up from 63,000 in 2013, came from the company's Island Gold mine in Ontario. To boost production at Island Gold, the company hired Renaud Adams as its new president on Nov. 15. He came from Joe Conway's Primero Mining Corp. (P: $4.82), where he was chief operating officer, and before that he worked for Mr. Conway at Iamgold. Mr. Adams says the most cost-effective way to expand production at Island will be by digging deeper. So far, the company has been mining around the 400-metre-depth level, but there are another one million ounces of gold inferred below that, and today Mr. Adams proved that mineralization extends even farther, down to 1,200 metres underground. This will "favourably impact" the company's all-in cash costs, he says, currently around $875 an ounce. Mr. Adams budgets $7-million on deep drilling this year. The company has $37-million in working capital. The new president is not going to be cheap. At Primero he received $926,650 in salary and cash bonus in 2013.

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