Two volume spikes hit our scanner today. One had a US$300K paid marketing campaign behind it. The other hides a US$610M NPV on a US$19M market cap. Here’s how we told them apart.
Two volume spikes hit our scanner today. One had a US$300K paid marketing campaign behind it. The other hides a US$610M NPV on a US$19M market cap. Here’s how we told them apart.
Our end-of-day volume scanner **flagged 65 Canadian names today (July 6).** The two loudest ones tell a story about how junior mining actually works.
Spike number one: **SPMC.V (South Pacific Metals)**,16x its median volume, third straight day, up 41% over the past month. Highest score on our board. But in early June the company itself announced it had engaged a marketing firm (i2i Marketing Group) with an initial US$300,000 online media budget, with 1.07M stock options granted at $0.54 the same week. The assets are genuinely interesting, and that’s exactly the point: a real story is what promoters can sell. High-grade hits next to K92’s mine, and a 4.2 Moz AuEq inferred porphyry bought from Harmony Gold for just US$1M. **Also**: under a year of cash, and the project sits in PNG’s Hela province, where Porgera, one of the world’s great gold mines, had its licence suspended in 2020. **A bought spike is a near-automatic pass for us, whatever the assets look like. We passed and logged it.**
Spike number two: **VAU.V (Viva Gold)**, 12.9x volume on July 6, but this one rode a real drill release: a new discovery on July 1 at Midway Hills, Nevada (38.1 m at 0.89 g/t gold including 6.1 m at 3.56 g/t), outside its existing resource. The existing resource: 504,000 oz gold, 86% of it Measured and Indicated. The 2025 PEA shows a post-tax NPV of US$610M at $4,000 gold (gold closed around $4,150 today). Market cap: roughly US$19M. The market pays about 3% of NPV.
Why so cheap? Because at $2,000 gold this same deposit showed a 2.9% IRR. **It was economically dead, orphaned through the whole bear cycle, financed at 15 cents round after round.** Gold doubled; the stock still trades at its old placement price. **The repricing of gold has not reached the orphans yet.**
**The honest caveats**,because there always are some: initial capex is US$242M, nine times the market cap, so major dilution or a partner/takeout is unavoidable. Fully diluted is 218M shares with a wall of warrants at $0.17 to $0.24. Management owns only about 2%. And the CEO’s previous company, Atna Resources, went through bankruptcy in 2015 (in a $1,100 gold market, but it is on the record). **Next dated catalysts**: assays pending on 11 holes, and a pre-feasibility study due Q4 2026.
**We pass on the loud one and dig into the quiet one. We watch, we don’t chase.**
What’s your tell for separating a bought spike from an organic one?
Disclosure: no position in either name as of July 6, 2026. Educational only, not financial advice, do your own due diligence.