September 14th NEX

[Note: In the last correction sweep, I forgot to change Friday's closing figure in the opening sentence; this mistake has now been corrected. Apologies to any who were misled.]


In Friday's NEX trading, the Barrel's Bottom Composite index closed at 87.66, up 0.21 points or 0.239% from the previous day's close of 87.45. The pattern that the BBC Index followed on Thursday, of marking time throughout the day, continued on Friday. After opening at about the same level as its Thursday closing, the BBCI sunk slightly. A noon erasure of the loss didn't hold for the early afternoon; it wasn't until the last hour of trading that the BBCI climbed back into positive territory.

Here are the values for the Barrel's Bottom Composite for the NEX, hour by hour:

• 10 AM: 87.44
• 11 AM: 87.32
• 12 PM: 87.51
• 1 PM: 87.27
• 2 PM: 87.28
• 3 PM: 87.40
• 4 PM/Close: 87.66

Forty-one NEX stocks traded Friday. Of these, 13 advanced, 13 declined and 15 remained unchanged. There were 132 trades. The top trader in terms of raw volume was SMC Ventures Inc. [NEX:SMV.H], with an unusually high volume of 494,224 shares. Seven of the ten trades in SMV, comprising 477,000 shares, took place at exactly the same time: about 10:54 AM ET. All of these trades had RBC as the sell-side financial institution. Given that the last of these seven had pushed the price of SMV.H down seven cents from Thursday's close, and that the price of the stock recovered partially later in the day, it's apparent that a large block of SMC was gotten rid of late Friday morning. (The next trade also had RBC as the sell-side institution, but it was for an odd lot of 224 shares and went about eighteen minutes after the first seven.) Those seven trades ranged from 14.5 cents/share to the above-mentioned 12.5 cents/share. SMV.H closed at 15 cents/share, down 4.5 cents/share from Thursday's close. Despite that drop, it stayed within a trading range that's held for most of the year. It didn't make a 52-week low even at the lowest-priced trade of the day.

The other Barrel's Bottom report and the TSX Venture closing summary for yesterday have SMC also at #1 in terms of value of shares traded. In addition to those other firsts, SMC placed first on the the top-ten list of volume traded divided by total shares outstanding, found below.

There was one news release from a NEX company that was picked up by Marketwire on Friday, announcing a change in the CEO of Pan Terra Industries [NEX: PNT.H]. The old President, Don Sandford, resigned and was replaced by Aaron Lane. In addition, Pan Terra has a new director on its board, Tony Pezzotti. The company's stock remains suspended, pending the finishing up of a corporate reorganization.

There was also an announcement by Rocher Deboule [NEX: RD.H] in yesterday's TSX Venture Daily Bulletins, which was the only one for a NEX company in that digest. It announced a halt in trading of RD.H pending a further announcement from the company. As it turns out, there's a bit of a story behind that innocuous announcement, which was fleshed out by members of Stockhouse as posted on Stockhouse's "Bull Board" for Rocher Deboule. Specifically, a spokesperson for the "House of Nikat'een" is claiming that "possibly two or three drilling holes are located on Nikat'een Traditional Territory" and that more may be too. The press release, which was posted by "thebeun" within an hour of the halt at the RD.H forum, also contains the demand that Rocher's "[drilling] operations also cease until we are consulted." The author of this release is "Skid'm def Hoya't (Wayne Campbell), Spokesperson for Wilps Nikat'een." The halt was announced at 10:15 AM ET. RD.H had traded three times as of then; the last trade before the halt put the stock down 2 cents/share for a price of 56 cents/share.

There were two NEX companies that sent out releases Friday through Canjex Publishing. The first, Network Exploration Ltd. [NEX: NET.H], sent out three releases. The first one announced that Network has now qualified for a listing on Tier 2 of the Venture Exchange, so it's leaving the NEX. The second release announced that Network's symbol will be changed to NET, as is customary for stocks that move to Tier 2: it's normal to just drop the ".H". The third release announced a private placement of 4,297,000 units at a price of 20 cents/unit. Each unit contains one share and a warrant to purchase a common share at 25 cents/share for a period of 1 year. NET.H's final close on the NEX was at 20.5 cents/share with 12,500 shared traded.

The second NEX company that released news through Canjex was Challenger Development Corp. [NEX: CDQ.H], which announced a private placement of its own. 6,666,667 units, comprising one common share and a warrant to purchase another with strike price of 10 cents/share, were sold for 7.5 cents/unit. The reason for the unit price being way below CDQ's Friday closing price of 39 cents/share was the placement being negotiated as of April 19th of this year. The closing price of Challenger as of that day was 13.5 cents/share; the stock had traded during only 9 trading days in the entire month of April, and only 10 trading days in the months of January to March. Only about 130,000 shares of Challenger had traded during the entire three-and-a-half month stretch between January 2nd and April 18th. As also mentioned in the release, the number of units actually sold were little more than half of the 12 million that were originally intended to be sold. According to the company, this reduction resulted from "[a] subsequent decrease in the number of subscriptions for units," making the proceeds from the placement equal to exactly $500,000. The funds are earmarked for these purposes: "exploration programs, mineral -- $210,000; acquisition, additional mineral exploration property -- $75,000; exploration programs on additional mineral exploration property -- $75,000; debt payments -- $30,500; and working capital -- $109,500." Any funds received due to exercise of the warrants will be used solely for working capital.

One NEX stock traded more than ten times on Friday: the same Challenger just mentioned above. (As mentioned earlier, SMC Ventures was one trade below this threshold.) CDQ.H actually didn't trade at all until about 2:52 PM ET; 11 of the 13 trades were made in the last hour of trading. The first five trades saw the price of CDQ.H inch up to 40 cents/share, but the subsequent eight were made at the price of 39 cents/share, which left Challenger unchanged from Thursday's close. Friday's volume for CDQ.H was 76,000 shares. Challenger placed at #6 on the top-ten list by daily turnover, found below.

The top percentage gainer in Friday's trading was Pacific Wildcat Resources Corp., with a gain of 7.5 cents/share or 45.54% to close at 26 cents/share. Three trades did it, all of which were made at the same time of about 11:28 AM ET; the buy-side financial institution for all three trades was Raymond James. The first trade was for 500 shares at 24 cents/share, the second was for 1500 shares at 25 cents/share and the third was for 25,000 shares at the closing price of 26 cents/share. Evidently, these trades were part of a bought block of 27,000 shares that were snapped up by an eager buyer. Pacific Wildcat closed at 4 cents below its 52-week high and 8.5 cents above its 52-week low.

The top percentage decliner for Friday was the above-mentioned SMC Ventures [NEX: SMV.H], which lost 23.08% on the day. As noted above, SMV.H closed at 15 cents/share for a loss of 4.5 cents/share.

Finally, the above-mentioned list of yesterday's top ten traders, as measured by % of total outstanding shares or daily turnover:

1. SMC Ventures Inc. [NEX: SMV.H] - 8.99% of total shares outstanding;
2. Rose Marie Resources Ltd. [NEX: RSR.H] - 1.96% of TSO;
3. Arcland Resources Inc. [NEX: ADR.H] - 1.34%;
4. Avigo Resources Corp. [NEX: TMX.H] - 0.720%;
5. Gainey Resources Ltd. [NEX: GRD.H] - 0.648%;
6. Challenger Development Corp. [NEX: CDQ.H] - 0.603%;
7. Gold Star Resources Corp. [NEX: GXX.H] - 0.588%;
8. Isee3d Inc. [NEX: ICT.H] - 0.382%;
9. Global Tree Technologies Inc. [NEX: GTT.H] - 0.294%;
10. Emergence Resort Canada Inc. [NEX: ERS.H] - 0.272%

NOTE: I am not affiliated with the TSX, nor is this blog. The Barrel's Bottom Composite index is not endorsed by the TSX.

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