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 Tuesday was an upbeat 62-48-155. The TSX Venture Exchange gained 10 points to 822 while polished diamond prices held steady. Mike Koziol and Rick Mazur's Alto Ventures Ltd. (ATV) gained 1.5 cents to 5.5 cents on 1.05 million shares. The gold company now has a diamond focus centred on Saskatchewan's Pikoo district, where it wrapped up till sampling earlier this month. Peter Dickie's Niocorp Developments Ltd. (NB) lost two cents to 60 cents on 459,000 shares. The company concluded a six-hole drill program this year and has been producing long intercepts of higher-grade niobium. The last two averaged over 600 metres in length at 0.70 per cent niobium oxide.

Grenville Thomas's North Arrow Minerals Inc. (NAR), unchanged at 55 cents on 9,000 shares, has wrapped up its second till sampling program this year at Pikoo, its intriguing diamond prospect in northeastern Saskatchewan. The results will lead to drilling early next year. North Arrow collected 119 new samples this fall, bringing its 2014 tally to 560, more than the company and its co-venturer, Stornoway Diamond Corp. (SWY: $0.56), collected in all the years previous. Results so far indicate that Pikoo hosts at least two additional kimberlite indicator mineral trains and possibly as many as five; something that North Arrow's latest samples will presumably settle. North Arrow had great success with two mineral trains delineated on Pikoo a few years ago. The company completed its 80-per-cent earn-in on Pikoo in the fall of 2013 by drilling 10 holes into several targets, hitting kimberlite in nine. One target, PK-150, yielded 745 microdiamonds from 210 kilograms of kimberlite, including 23 stones larger than a 0.85-millimetre sieve. Those gems weighed 0.28 carat, implying a diamond content of 1.3 carats per tonne and triggering the first big diamond area play in several years.

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