Gold has been one of the year’s best-performed commodities, rising from $607/oz in early January to climb to a high of $682.60/oz overnight, but gold stocks have been slow to follow the price’s lead.
That appeared to change today, with several miners – most notably Papua New Guinean play Lihir – posting strong gains.
The heavily leveraged Lihir ran up a gain of 25c or 7.7% to end the day at $3.51.
St Barbara was also a big winner, adding 5.5c or 11% to close at 55.5c, while Equigold (up 6.62%) and takeover target Ballarat Goldfields (up 6.6%) also posted gains.
Victorian goldminer Perseverance began making up for its steady falls from earlier in the week, turning things around with a 2.5c or 6.3% gain to 42c.
Elsewhere in the market, the day’s standout performers all came from the white-hot uranium sector.
Helping the interest along was the upgrade in the estimated spot price of yellowcake as calculated by North American uranium specialists Ux Consulting.
Earlier this week, the group raised its uranium spot price from $US75 per pound to $85/lb, a new record high for the booming commodity.
Among the companies cashing in was A-Cap Resources, which gained 22.5c (19.2%) to $1.395 after cashing itself up to the gills courtesy of a $15.6 million placement out of North America. The funds will be pumped into the company’s uranium hunt in Botswana.
In other moves, recently listed uranium and coal play Bowen Energy added 20% to its share price, this week’s uranium listing sensation, Yellow Rock, gained another 18.8%, while Uranium King put on 13.9%.
And punters used their wallets to tip that good news would flow out of tonight’s scheduled press conference in the Czech Republic, at which the Czech mines minister is set to comment on Uran’s negotiations to acquire an interest in the country’s only uranium mine.
While Uran says it has no knowledge of what exactly the minister will say, investors were betting on it being positive, the company’s shares gaining 13.5c to $1.135.
Not going the way of its uranium brethren was Northern Uranium, which after going on a massive run last week following the announcement of an agreement with French nuclear giant Areva has been hit by profit taking the past couple of days.
The stock lost 16c or 9.8% today, meaning the company has shed 47c a share since peaking at $1.95 on Tuesday.
Elsewhere, diamond miner Kimberley Diamond Co slipped 4c or 4.2% to 92c after announcing it had not received any takeover proposals – contrary to suggestions in today’s The West Australian newspaper.
Finally, Canada-based LionOre International revealed it would de-list from the Australian Stock Exchange by June in response to the limited trading in its shares and the lack of an specific waiver regarding ASX listing rules.
Shares in the miner, which includes the Lake Johnston, Black Swan and Waterloo mines in Western Australia among its assets, dipped 10c or 0.6% to $16.40.
