Resources Top 5: Recent discoveries set market alight, $6bn gold investor sinks cash into near term miner

Junior gold explorer Octanex up 125% on very little news
Metal Hawk is now up ~410% – from 18c to 92c – over the past 2 days; Kingwest is now up 65% since announcing a gold discovery on Monday
$6 billion market cap Chifeng Gold Mining will buy ~5.8m shares in emerging miner MetalsTech at 34c apiece

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Wednesday September 15.

OCTANEX (ASX:OXX)

The $15m market cap gold explorer has kicked off early-stage soil sampling at the ‘Sefton ‘gold project in WA.

The aim of the program is to define gold and copper-gold anomalies for follow-up drilling, OXX says.

“Due to widespread transported cover and the deep weathering profile of the region, low values of gold and other ‘pathfinder’ elements in surface material are considered significant and may provide indications of gold in the bedrock,” the company says.

“The company considers this area highly prospective for the discovery of a major gold resource.”

Usually, news like this does not result in a +140% share gain, but this is 2021 and markets are crazy.

In April, OXX’s share price also surged to hit 28-month highs on encouraging early exploration results at ‘Sefton’, before falling back.

Today’s early gain has the explorer up ~200% year-to-date, but below those recent highs of ~8c per share.

METAL HAWK (ASX:MHK)

(Up on no news)

Is this another pump? A reaction to yesterday’s emerging discovery and/or a booming nickel price?

Who knows, but $42m market cap explorer Metal Hawk is now up ~410% – from 18c to 92c – over the past 2 days.

The explorer, which only listed November last year, hit 2m of massive (best stuff) and semi-massive (second best stuff) nickel sulphides from 144m to 146m at the ‘Commodore’ prospect, part of the ‘Berehaven’ project near Kalgoorlie.

Assays are due in about 3-4 weeks.

MINDAX (ASX:MDX)

(Up on no news)

Another mysterious share price rise.

Former micro-cap struggler Mindax languished for two years in suspension but made up for lost time after getting reinstated to the ASX in May.

MDX partnered with a Chinese company happy to front capital for a magnetite iron ore project in the Yilgarn province of WA.

The share price of this ‘flavour of the month’ junior spiked as much as 7,500%, before settling lower as iron ore prices came off the boil.

Edit: not so mysterious, as it turns out – just a leaky ship.

The explorer has since announced that three of the nine conditions precedent have been satisfied to form the ‘Mt Forrest’ iron ore project JV with Norton Gold, up from two in August.

“Subject to the receipt of shareholder approval to the transaction [on Sept 16], Mindax is not aware of any matter that would prevent the satisfaction of the remaining Conditions,” it says.

METALSTECH (ASX:MTC)

$6 billion market cap Chifeng Gold Mining will buy ~5.8m shares in emerging miner MetalsTech at 34c apiece for a total investment of $2m.

This is a pretty big deal, MTC says.

“Chifeng is widely considered to be one of the most successful precious metals investors in China owing largely to the experience of their chairman Mr Wang Jianhua who before transforming Chifeng, served as CEO of $62bn capped Zijin Mining and before that, chairman of $17bn capped Shandong Gold,” MTC chairman Russell Moran says.

MTC’s 1.5moz (and growing) ‘Sturec’ project could be a world class epithermal deposit, he says.

“We hope that this recent interest from Chifeng is a sign of growing interest in our broader development plans for Sturec.”

MTC also reminds investors that they need to finalise their shareholdings by October 7 to receive free shares in lithium spinout Winsome Resources (ASX:WR1).

KINGWEST RESOURCES (ASX:KWR)

(Up on no news)

Kingwest is now up 65% since announcing a gold discovery under a WA salt lake called ‘Goongarrie’ on Monday.

Exploring for gold underneath salt lakes is tough, which is probably why so many remain underexplored — regardless of how prospective they are.

The high-grade Invincible gold deposit, which forms the backbone of Gold Fields’ St Ives camp near Kalgoorlie, almost went undiscovered due to the low tenor gold results and small geochemical ‘footprint’.

That is why early results like 3m @ 6.5g/t gold and 3m @ 4.1g/t gold from Kingwest are so important.

“These results support our targeting for a potential major discovery which we have named the ‘Sir Laurence’ Prospect,” CEO Ed Turner says.

“We have just scratched the surface of bedrock mineralisation at this stage.”

“I look forward to receiving the outstanding assays as well as planning follow up drilling along strike within Target A10, which includes many other similar litho-structural targets.”