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Australian stocks have fallen as investors moved to lock in profits sending the All Ords down 54.7 points or 1% to 5392.3.
News overnight that Greece had failed to elect a president sent markets into turmoil. The country now faces a snap general election in January casting doubt on Greece’s commitment to its bailout terms.
Energy stocks were some of the hardest hit with () dropping 3.2%$8.19 Oil Search () down 1.4% to $7.85 and () shedding 1.3% to $38.09
Market action here…
Despite the negative market investors flocked to () which hit a high of $0.036 today before closing flat at $0.027 with more than 48 million shares traded and (ASX:AVQ) which rose 6.7% to $0.016 with more than 25 million shares traded.
Late yesterday QBL delivered an initial Indicated JORC 2012 resource that underpins critical first years of potential production from its South Johnstone Bauxite project in Queensland as well as a revised Scoping Study.
Notably the Scoping Study does not rely upon the lower category Inferred Resource at all.
The higher confidence level of initial Indicated resources was defined from limited drilling to date below 1.3 metres or along strike; in fact the resource was defined from less than 1% of the Exploration Target area ranging between 193 million tonnes and 405 million tonnes.
Capital expenditure remains the same at just $5 million which is very low for a potential near term producer.
Meanwhile the IRR of 223% provides a measure of the returns available from mining the bauxite at the project even based on the initial Indicated resource.
The project operating costs are (unchanged) and still low; these could be expected to be refined down with more work on mine planning.
AVQ is also positioning itself for a strong 2015 with its entry into a strategic partnership with Papua New Guinea’s Anitua Limited which is providing A$5 million in funding.
The company has also been awarded costs of SBD$29.3 million (A$4.7 million) by the Solomon Islands High Court in relation to its victory over Sumitomo.
Taken together the company will have nearly $10 million in further funding towards continuing drilling in 2015 with the aim of upgrading data across the Isabel Nickel Project to JORC standards and completing relevant studies to progress the project towards mine development.
Axiom and Anitua have also agreed to negotiate arms’ length commercial terms for a range of services to be provided by Anitua for the Isabel project.
This may include exploration drilling construction camp management and contract mining.
() is up 25% to $0.005 () rose 16.7% to $0.007 and () up 11.8% to $0.019.
() gained 12.5% to $0.18 while White Cliff Minerals () is up 14.29% to $0.008.
The other Blue Chips
Major miners
() down 0.7% to $29.48
() up 0.4% to $2.74
Newcrest () down 0.8% to $10.85
(ASX:RIO) down 0.6% to $57.70
Big 4 banks
ANZ Bank (ASX:ANZ) down 0.6% to $32.05
() down 0.5% to $85.66
() down 0.5% to $33.51
() down 0.4% to $33.20
Other banks financials and industrials
() down 1.4% to $5.52
() down 1.1% to $12.19
Bendigo and Adelaide Bank () down 1.0% to $12.80
() down 0.9% to $58.13
Suncorp () down 0.5% to $14.07
() down 0.7% to $5.98
Retailers
JB Hi-FI () down 1.2% to $15.80
() up 1.0% to $42.02
Woolworths () down 1.7% to $30.57
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