RE:RE:Stockwatch Commentary2024-04-24 20:52 ET - Market Summary by Will Purcell The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Wednesday was a so-so 80-89-141 as the TSX Venture Exchange fell one point to 574. Chuck Fipke and Chad Ulansky's Metalex Ventures Ltd. (MTX) closed unchanged at 1.5 cents on 13,000 shares Tuesday and did not trade today. The company's diamond and scandium -- or is it now gold? -- promotion in the James Bay district of Quebec quietly took a hit last week with word, buried in the bowels of an otherwise more cheerful news release, that a four-hole drill program on the A5 block was a bust. This was to have been a five-hole drill program, but the wildfire scourge that plagued the province last spring and summer limited the company's effort. Mr. Ulansky, president and chief executive officer, says that results of the work have now been received and "significant mineralization for either gold or ilmenite/scandium was not intersected." And so, he and Mr. Fipke, chairman, are reviewing the results along with previous data to decide if drilling the fifth target is warranted. If it is, the hole would play tail-end Charlie to a proposed drill program this year on the B3 claim block. B3 is about 500 kilometres northwest of A5 and about 200 kilometres east of James Bay, and while most of the company's Quebec ground was acquired many years ago for its diamond potential, Metalex acquired B3 in 2022 after heavy mineral sampling and geophysics suggested it was favourable for copper-nickel-cobalt mineralization. And so Metalex, which segued from diamonds to gold and then onward to lithium and scandium across its sprawling Quebec claim blocks, is now chasing nickel, copper and cobalt thanks to two intriguing geophysical anomalies present within an area that yielded sulphides in the company's soil and till sampling programs. (There were more -- "18 significant conductors" were pared back to eight deemed likely to represent sulphide mineralization -- and from that list, two features in the southwestern part of the block were short listed.) One, the B3-q target, is thought to be a wide and steeply dipping electromagnetic zone coincident with a singular magnetic anomaly. The other, B3-p, is a moderately strong electromagnetic conductor associated with a weak linear magnetic anomaly -- geophysical jargon that translates to a thick and steeply dipping feature. And so, it appears that Metalex will be minding its p's and q's this summer with at least a few holes planned in the program and perhaps one more at the undrilled A5 target. As for diamonds, the word appears just four times in Metalex's latest presentation -- once to remind you that Mr. Fipke was the "discoverer of the Ekati diamond mine" in the Northwest Territories and once to applaud the company acquiring an interest in a South African diamond project that has gone nowhere in years. The two other appearances relate to the U2 kimberlite, west of James Bay in the Attawapiskat district. That play was big news in the early 2010s, when Dundee Corp. (DC.A: $1.27) agreed to spend $51-million for a 51-per-cent interest in the project. Dundee had second thoughts as years dragged by without Metalex getting government permits or a deal with the local first nations, and so it quit the arrangement. Metalex eventually got permission from the Ontario government, and it has a deal with Marten Falls first nation, but Attawapiskat is still offside. Further, 1.5-cent Metalex appears unlikely to raise the cash required for the 10,000-tonne bulk sample needed to prove or kill U2. And so, diamonds have given way to lithium and scandium, with nickel, copper and cobalt are nuzzling in on the action.