1) It's more or less normal that the SP of a explorer transiting to producer goes lower during construction - doesn't make sense, but it happens a lot. So I think we are seeing selling by people who like ytc but think they can get in at more or less the same level 6 months from now. (These people could be very wrong, though, since we are still doing a lot of exploration. If drilling at Nymagee, Federation or - later - CoCu hits the jackpot, they might find themselves chasing the SP ...)
Add some general angst that gold (Fed decision today) and copper (Pettis remarks on China demand) might go lower, and you get our chart.
2) Glencore is canning its CSA extension, because it would be uneconomical if the price of copper goes lower. They are already digging very deep at CSA, and mining gets a lot more expensive at these levels. So Glencore is keeping its deep copper in ground til copper prices are sure to stay at current levels or go higher.
Instead, they'll be getting (some of) their copper from us (Nymagee), where the ore is a lot closer to the surface and can be produced at a very low cost. Don't forget that Glencore is a trading house at heart - they don't really care whether they dig the resources out themselves or get them provided by s.o. else. Depending on timing, I could even see us trucking our shallow copper ore to CSA for early cash flow that we can then use for more exploration + to build our plant up to phase II.
YTC Price at posting:
16.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
