For the tale of the tape, the TSX Exchange tacked on 0.08%, while the TSX Gold Index climbed 0.3% and the TSX Venture Exchange, Canada’s largest junior exploration bourse, added 0.13% with the declining issuers beating out the advancers by a 475 to 349 margin on volume of 101 million shares traded.

Mining giant Rio Tinto showed that the diversified miners are not dead yet. The major tabled earnings of $6.9 billion in the first six months of the year. This marks a 113% jump over the same period of 2007 and should help the company fend off a $147 billion takeover offer from rival BHP Billiton. Rio ended the day up $1.60 to $381.25 in New York.

Investors digested yesterday’s news that Hathor Exploration intersected 5.3 metres of basement-hosted uranium mineralization having off-scale radioactivity readings at its 90% owned Midwest NorthEast property in Saskatchewan and decided to belatedly reward the stock. Hathor ended the day up C$0.23 at C$3.58, while 10% owner Terra Ventures added C$0.07 to close at C$0.90.

Rubicon Minerals tagged another nice hole at its Phoenix project in the Red Lake mining camp of Ontario. The hot hole yielded 891.1 grams gold per tonne over 2 metres and as a result Rubicon ended the day up C$0.35 at C$1.71.

Management of Petaquilla Copper finally gave in to the revised C$2.20 per share cash offer by Inmet Mining. Petaquilla added C$0.29 to close at C$2.18.

Early indication from the Canadian financial earnings front is that more bad news is pending and that means more lack of liquidity, which could be good news for the gold bugs. We will see what Wednesday trading has in store.

Source: Resource Stock Roundup Wednesday August 27, 2008