Junior Golds Are back, And With It Vancouver's Business District

You know the turkeys are flying when the mainstream Canadian media mentions Howe Street. Back in the days when the Canadian Venture Exchange was the Vancouver Stock Exchange, Howe Street was Vancouver's Wall Street - or "Fence Street," to put it unkindly. (Back in the day, the VSE had a bit of a bad reputation when it came to stock scams.)

When the junior market is unfrothy, Howe Street only appears in passing as part of the Vancouver business beat. Now that there's froth, Howe has rated a profile in the Vancouver Sun.

These are boom times for Vancouver junior mining companies, as high gold prices coupled with low interest rates have speculative investors looking to Howe Street for juicy returns.

The B.C. companies with the highest share price gains in 2010 certainly reflected that trend. Vancouver juniors Gold Canyon Resources and Canaco Resources topped the list with share price gains of more than 1,000 per cent each.

“We had the type of environment that was conducive for speculative capital to move into the sector,”

said Wendell Zerb, director, research – mining analyst at Canaccord Genuity.

“In that kind of environment, companies that were working on what I would call exciting exploration/development programs, if they had success, they were well-rewarded in the marketplace.”

Well-rewarded they were. This list of ten juniors with market caps of $100 million or more shows the kind of gains that were enjoyed by the prescient (or lucky) few that got in one year ago (and held on instead of selling early):

1. Gold Canyon Resources (GCU-V) 1,100%
2. Canaco Resources (CAN-V) 1,034%
3. Primary Petroleum (PIE-V) 982%
4. Gold Bullion Development (GBB-V) 855%
5. East West Petroleum (EW-V) 680%
6. Rio Alto Mining (RIO-V) 598%
7. Tasman Metals (TSM-V) 528%
8. Mart Resources (MMT-V) 500%
9. Northern Superior (SUP-V) 500%
10. Copper Fox Metals (CUU-V) 480%

Six of the ten, including the top two, are gold stocks although two of them are mixed bags. (Rio Alto is copper-gold, and Copper Fox is copper-gold-molybdenum-silver.) The gold companies are the ones with links.