There are always stars, even in a depressed market. Chalice, Magmatic and White Cliff are three exploration stocks enjoying their own ‘wins’ right now.

Yesterday, Chalice Gold Mines gave glum investors something to cheer about. A high-grade nickel-copper-palladium discovery was made with the first-ever drill hole into the Julimar project, about 60km from Perth in WA.

The maiden intercept of 19m @ 2.59 per cent nickel, 1.04 per cent copper, 8.37g/t palladium and 1.11g/t platinum from 48m was made in fresh rock at the so-called ‘Conductor E’ target.

Chalice (ASX:CHN) rocketed 135 per cent for the day – an impressive feat given the state of markets currently.

However, there’s always a bit of luck involved in exploration – a second drill hole into an adjacent target (Conductor ‘A’) has since come back having intersected no significant mineralisation.

The plan is to drill test two more conductors and then keep drilling the discovery at Conductor E. The  company has also pegged an additional 2,300sqkm of new licence applications, and is now evaluating other potential targets on its existing tenure.

For Chalice, Julimar wasn’t even meant to be a major focus right now.

But with ~$23m in the bank, the company has the flexibility to explore the flagship Pyramid gold project in Victoria as well as ramp up activity at Julimar and its other projects, as required.

READ: The Explorers — Alex Dorsch on making millions from drilling… and when they might actually mine

 

 

Its ‘moment of truth’ time for Magmatic Resources (ASX:MAG), which is finally drilling the Lady Ilse porphyry copper -gold target near Alkane Resources’ massive Boda discovery in NSW.

They reckon it could be big.

“Key features of both Cadia East [mine] and Boda are present at Lady Ilse with the scale of the pyrite halo suggested by the datasets in the Lady Ilse District highlighting a much larger scale opportunity than Boda, with the potential for preservation of a Cadia East scale gold-copper porphyry system,” Magmatic says.

The stock has been one of the most prominent early winners of the East Lachlan porphyry copper-gold rush, up almost 1200 per cent since early September last year.

READ: The Explorers — Magmatic’s David Richardson on big porphyry potential and Alkane’s perfect timing

 

And $2m market cap minnow White Cliff Minerals (ASX:WCN) will pick up two copper-gold projects in the red-hot Paterson Province of Western Australia.

Regionally, a number of explorers have inked lucrative joint ventures with major miners as Rio Tinto and Newcrest target first production from their respective projects in 2022-2023. 

Five targets have already been generated at White Cliff’s new tenements, which are about 100km from the giant Telfer copper-gold mine.

The explorer says it will now review historical data ahead of a planned geochemical (soil sampling) program.

Read MoreCopperNickel

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