Try a Google search for “nearology” and you are likely to instead get an education on neurology, the area of medicine dealing with the brain and nervous system.
But while major dictionaries are yet to catch on with the modern mining term, it does not take Einstein to realise that if a project is close to, or on the same geological structure as another operation that happens to be going gangbusters on the ASX, it is also likely to be rocketing up the boards.
Explorer Raiden Resources is a prime example.
Its discovery this week of 3.5kms of outcropping pegmatites in Western Australia’s rich Pilbara region on a tenement package that abuts Azure’s had the market all hot and sweaty with thoughts of a potential Azure look-a-like.
After closing at just 1.3 cents the previous week, its stock flew to 2.7 cents – a jump of more than 107 per cent. Raiden finished the week trading at 2.5 cents with a market cap of $51.38 million.
Raiden’s ground joins Azure’s to the south and consists of two small but tactically significant blocks along strike from Azure’s northeast-southwest trending pegmatite swarm.
Samples from Raiden’s pegmatite outcrops are currently with the lab for analysis as the market waits to see if they match legacy outcrop lithium numbers which went as high as 2.22 per cent.
And just in case Azure’s influence needed any more confirmation, nearby Errawarra Resources, with a market cap of $11.8 million, doubled its share price to touch 24 cents this week.
Errawarra, which has ground just 3km west of Raiden’s, abutting the southern boundary of Azure, has enjoyed several recent share price runs and most of them appear to have been bolstered by the rise to prominence of its nifty neighbour, Azure.
Errawarra’s geologists were on the ground this month sampling outcropping pegmatites which lie on the regionally extensive Sholl Shear Zone, a long-lived area of deformation around one kilometre wide which ties the company’s ground to Azure’s.
So why all the hype around nearology? Well, mineralisation doesn’t follow tenement boundaries and we know Azure is onto hundreds of outcropping pegmatites with many bearing high lithium grades in sampling. In fact, one stunning Azure drill hole came in at 209m going 1.4 per cent lithium oxide.
Azure also says the mineralisation, which has been tested with almost 38km of drilling, continues along strike for about eight to nine kilometres and in places, starts from surface and has already been tracked down to at least 400m depth.
So, does Azure’s mineralisation extend along strike into Raiden and Errawarra’s ground? Well, it might. Punters seem to like the idea that it does, pushing both company’s share prices up as Azure provides continuous news of lithium drill hits to the market.
Notably, both companies have outcropping pegmatites of their own, suggesting a similar geological setting and in Raidens case, those outcrops have some colour with a prior rock chip sampling program experiencing some success.
By any measure Azure’s recent stock market ride has been wild. At the start of this year its stock was trading at below 30 cents and in a classic “ten-bagger” move, it very nearly breached $3 recently before settling back to $2.50 for an impressive market cap of $976 million.
Even though the miners were well represented in this week’s Runners of the Week, tech play 4DS Memory was the biggest mover with a 142 per cent price jump to touch 16 cents off its close last week of 6.6c. The company tested its new computer memory technology and had better than expected results, recording read and write speeds of a blistering 27 nanoseconds and an endurance of more than 2 billion cycles.
Back to mining and Red Metal Ltd did some drilling near Mt Isa in Northwest Queensland and assays proved up a new, shallow rare earths play in an enriched granite intrusion under a thin sand veneer – an unusual geological setting for rare earths.
Significantly, the company says the geology is “weak acid soluble” and whilst many won’t know what that means, the company says it will likely lead to cheaper and easier processing – a similar argument to that being made by the clay-based rare earths players.
And with the headline intersection going 120m at 1962 ppm TREO with hints of yttrium, if the cheap processing line checks out, Red Metal will have a hell of a lot of product to process.
The news sent the company’s share price from 7.5 cents to a peak of 14.5c, a 93 per cent price hike.
Back to lithium, this time with a Canadian flavour, explorer Native Mineral Resources jumped 140 per cent for the week to hit 6 cents after sophisticated investors tipped in $640 000 to help it acquire and explore a project at the Mclaughlin Lake Lithium site in Manitoba, Canada. Previous exploration in the area mapped a 400m long pegmatite dyke with widths up to about 2.2m that looks like it is begging to see a drill bit.
The new money came in at 3c a share and delivered an immediate 100 per cent uplift for those sophisticated investors when the market backed the idea of yet another lithium play in Canada.
They also picked up a grab bag of Native Mineral options with a strike price of 6c a share – maybe that’s why they call them sophisticated investors.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: office@bullsnbears.com.au