Hedge funds slash bullish wagers on gold before war jitters
Speculators have reduced net-long positions by 3.6%.
Cascadia Minerals’ (TSXV: CAM) shares soared on Monday after the junior miner announced a C$3.2 million private placement led by Michael Gentile, one of its largest shareholders, who plans to up his stake to 9.99%.
Gentile is co-founder of Montreal-based Bastion Asset Management and currently serves as director for several companies in the junior resource sector. Cascadia’s other major shareholders include Hecla Mining and Barrick Gold.
The financing will consist of 4.55 million units at C$0.42 each for C$1.9 million to fund general exploration, 2.15 million units at C$0.475 for C$1 million to fund British Columbia-based exploration, plus 725,000 common shares at C$0.42 for C$300,000.
By 12:40 p.m. ET, the stock traded at C$0.46 for a 31.4% intraday gain and a new 52-week high. The copper-gold explorer has a C$20.75 million ($15.2m) market capitalization.
According to Cascadia’s CEO Graham Downs, this financing would allow the company to “significantly expand” the ongoing drill program at its flagship Catch property, where the first 2024 diamond drill hole intersected mineralization over 140 metres on a step-out from last year’s porphyry discovery.
The 117 sq.-km-property is 56 km southeast of Carmacks in an underexplored part of central Yukon. Inaugural drilling in 2023 returned 116.6 metres of 0.31% copper with 0.30 gram gold per tonne from a new greenfield copper-gold porphyry discovery.
Downs added that the capital raise will also be used to test a “compelling copper-gold porphyry target” at its PIL property in the heart of BC’s Toodoggone region. The property covers 151.5 sq. km of underexplored land located 25 km northwest of the past-producing Kemess mine.
In addition to Catch and PIL, Cascadia also holds the Mack’s Copper, Milner, Idaho Creek and Sands of Time properties in Yukon, all of which have additional copper porphyry targets to explore.
