Equities continued to march higher during Tuesday’s session on the Canadian Markets as investors smell an economic recovery in the making. For the tale of the tape, the TSX Exchange gained 2.06%, while the TSX Gold Index gave back 1.8% and the TSX Venture Exchange, Canada’s largest junior exploration bourse, added 0.68% with the decliners beating out the advancers by a 358 to 343 margin on pathetic volume of 90 million shares traded.

Merger mania resumed with Lucara Diamond proposing to marry Motapa Diamonds in an all-share deal that would see Motapa getting 0.9055 of a Lucara share for each Motapa share. The move would consolidate the advanced Mothae project in Lesotho. Lucara ended the day flat at C$0.50, while Motapa added C$0.04 to close at C$0.35.

Shares of Baja Mining jumped C$0.075 to C$0.33 after the company tabled a 12 per cent decrease in capital costs for its Boleo copper-cobalt-zinc-manganese project in Mexico. The new number is $767 million, around $100 million less than the 2008 estimate.

Western Canadian Coal kept the good news rolling by reporting that its Belcourt property in British Columbia hosts 86 million tonnes of proven reserves in two deposits. The potential production profile is four million tonnes per year of metallurgical coal for a 15 year period. Western ended the day up C$0.13 at C$0.57.

Despite signs that the recent rally is running out of gas, investors keep jumping in to buy more of the beaten-down financial stocks. We will see what Wednesday trading has in store.

Source: Resource Stock Roundup: Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

Last 5 posts by Doug Casey

• Resource Stock Roundup:Monday, July 27, 2009 - July 27th, 2009
• Base Metals Higher - July 27th, 2009
• Crude Continues to Climb - July 27th, 2009
• Dollar Moves Lower - July 27th, 2009
• Gold Pushes Through $950 - July 27th, 2009