Investors came off the Canada Day holiday in a selling mood as profit taking dominated the resource sector during Thursday trading on the Canadian Markets. For the tale of the tape, the TSX Exchange was down 1.24%, while the TSX Gold Index rebounded 0.9% and the TSX Venture Exchange, Canada’s largest junior exploration bourse, added a modest 0.06% with the decliners edging out the advancers by a 400 to 316 margin on a weak 118 million shares traded.
Consolidation in the junior exploration sector continued with Canadian Gold Hunter looking to take over African-focused Sanu Resources. Under the offer, Canadian Gold Hunter will issue 0.5725 of its shares for every Sanu share. At the end of the day, Canadian Gold Hunter will have 134,161,066 shares outstanding and Sanu shareholders will own about a 17.8 per cent stake. Canadian Gold Hunter ended the day up C$0.02 at C$0.385, while Sanu closed up C$0.025 at C$0.19.

Mano River Resources is offering 1.57 of its shares for every one African Aura Resources share. In this marriage proposal, the combined entity will have nearly C$10 million in cash, an advanced stage, high-grade gold project and a well-funded iron ore project, both in Liberia, and some promising gold and iron exploration projects in Cameroon. Mano ended the day flat at C$0.07, while African Aura closed unchanged at C$0.08.

The United States markets are closed on Friday, so expect very weak trading on the Canadian bourse. We will see what Monday trading has in store.

Source: Resource Stock Roundup:Friday, July 03rd, 2009