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General Comments It was an extremely quiet week within the metals complex and the mining sector. For lack of a better term, it might be called a ‘sleeper’. On the week, nearby gold recovered most of what it lost in last Friday’s trading session, but remained lightly bid within a very narrowly confined range. Happily enough, Gold is emerging from its weakest seasonal time period and is heading into its strongest period from April to August. On the week, the yellow metal gained $6.60/oz to finish at $663.80, up from $657.20 the prior week. Yet despite the slightly higher prices for Gold, mining stocks slipped with the senior XAU Index falling .76 to end the week at a reading of 137.02, down from 137.78. Financial Sense Junior Gold Mining Index [FSJG] The weakness in the large cap miners also reflected itself in smaller-cap, secondary stocks, with Financial Sense Junior Gold Mining Index drifting lower to end at 313.98, down 1.72 index points from last week's close of 312.26. On the week, the FSJG Mining Index slipped 1.72%, yet still managed to end modestly above the 50-day moving average at 304.31 and the 200-day average at 259.32. 50-day & 200-day Moving Averages 
Within the FSJG Sub Indices, the Junior Producers ended slightly lower, as did the Exploration stocks. On Friday, the Junior Producer Index closed at 337.04, down .36 from last week's close of 337.40, with the index ending above the 50-day average at 332.60 and well above the 200-day average at 287.67. The Junior Exploration Index also ended lower, finishing at 180.15, down from 183.82, a loss of 3.67 index points or 1.99% on the week. Within the sub-indices, the only ‘star’ for the week, was the Junior Development Index, which has been dormant for some time. With a flash of ‘relative strength’, the index advanced 30.39 index points to close at 721.84, up from 691.25, a hefty gain of 4.23%. Within the Development sector, the gains were paced by several issues indicating reasonably healthy internal leadership. This week’s large advance in the Development Index left the index at about the 50% retracement level following the decline from the February 26th peak. Producer Companies
Development Companies 
Exploration Companies
In addition to last week's changes, we also note that Friday ended the first quarter of 2007 - a tumultuous quarter - which hosted a rather nasty stock market decline. On the quarter, spot Gold gained $27.80/ounce from a 12/29/06 close of $635.20 to a Friday close of $663.00.
As can be seen in the table above, despite the advance in physical Gold to the tune of better than 4%, the major gold stock indices veered more to the trend of the S&P which ended flat on the quarter. At the same time, all of the FSJG Indices performed very well, highlighting the powerful trends that are in place among the Junior Golds, a trend clearly evident in the Relative Strength Ratio of the FSJG Index to the XAU shown on the next chart.
I will be away for the next 10 days, but regular readers should know that when I return we will have a full update including all intervening data points for the indices and the moving averages. That’s all for now, Frank Financial Sense Junior Gold Index Archive *Please note that the individual companies in this index are proprietary and will not be disclosed due to compliance and regulatory issues resulting from the relationship of FinancialSense.com, Puplava Financial Services, Inc., Registered Investment Advisor and Puplava Securities, Inc. Member Firm FINRA/SIPC. |
