Gold prices have slipped for a second straight week as investors continued to liquidate their holdings to raise cash to cover margin calls in equities amid ongoing concerns about the COVID-19 outbreak.
However, the precious metal may soon regain lost ground with Kitco News quoting INTL FCStone head of market analysis for EMEA and Asia regions Rhona O’Connell as saying that once things are stable, “there will be a re-balancing and more interest coming into it”.
Gold is currently trading at $US1,492.86 ($2,593.63) per ounce.
READ: Gold’s small stumble is just a ‘blip’, analysts say
While still uncertain, the speculation is certainly welcome for the ASX small cap gold explorers that are still returning some interesting results.
Vango Mining (ASX:VAN) has hit high-grade gold at its Marymia project in Western Australia’s Mid-West region.
Top results from the PHB-1 prospect include 3m at 19.7 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 126m and 8m at 4.17g/t gold from 110m, including 3m at 8.69g/t gold within the same hole.
Results above 5g/t are generally considered to be high-grade.
The company says the results highlight the potential for shallow plunging mineralisation to the north of the previously mined pit.
Further results from PHB-1 are pending and Vango plans to carry out additional drilling to define and extend potential high-grade mineralisation open to the north and at depth.
The new results will be incorporated into an expected resource upgrade for Marymia.
Meanwhile, Alkane Resources (ASX:ALK) has drilled a further thick gold and copper intersection at the Boda prospect within its Northern Molong Porphyry project.
The latest result is a hit of more than 1.1km grading 0.55g/t gold and 0.25 per cent copper from 75m that includes a 96m zone at 3.97g/t gold and 1.52 per cent copper from 768m.
Boda has super-charged interest in the Lachlan Fold Belt in New South Wales by proving that the giant Cadia copper-gold mine is not the only game in town.
While the grades are fairly modest, some of the biggest, most profitable mines in the world have low grades and the easy-mining large volumes that characterise porphyry orebodies means they can be economic from copper concentrations as low as 0.15 per cent.
“Intersecting both a high-grade zone and a large consistent body of mineralisation are key attributes needed to show this has the potential to be a future mining operation,” managing director Nic Earner said.
Further results are expected in April.