For the tale of the tape, the TSX Exchange dropped 1.71%, while the TSX Gold Index fell 0.8% and the TSX Venture Exchange, Canada’s largest junior exploration bourse, added 0.40% but the declining issuers beat out the advancers by a 581 to 507 margin on huge volume of nearly 280 million shares traded.

A big winner on the session was Vast Exploration. The junior along with its consortium partner Niko Resources entered into a production sharing contract with the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq for the exploration, development and production of petroleum resources in the 846-square-kilometre Qara Dagh block in Kurdistan. Vast ended the day up C$0.31 at C$0.64.

Serengeti Resources got a modest boost after reporting a new copper-molybdenum zone southeast of the central copper-gold zone on its Kwanika copper-gold project in British Columbia. The western edge of the central zone returned 0.72% copper and 0.81 gram gold per tonne over 75 metres. Serengeti ended the day up C$0.04 at C$0.96.

Sticking to British Columbia, Skygold Ventures and partner Wildrose Resources tagged 47.5 metres running 2.04 grams gold per tonne some 275 metres west of the resource area on their Spanish Mountain project. Skygold ended the day up C$0.11 at C$0.73, while Wildrose added C$0.02 at C$0.51.

VMS Venture was halted from trading at C$0.55, up C$0.03 after 408,000 shares traded. Drill results pending for the Reed Lake base metal project in Saskatchewan is my bet. We will see.

Pediment Exploration lost C$0.03 to close at C$1.76 after reporting a 54.9 metre drill intercept running 1.6 grams gold per tonne at its San Antonio project in Baja California Sur, Mexico.

A very volatile first couple of trading days for the holiday shortened trading week on the Canadian markets. Clearly, the market at record highs has investors a little bit leery of putting new money to work. We will see what Thursday trading has in store.

Source: Resource Stock Roundup: Thursday, May 22nd, 2008