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Carrick Gold (CRK) $1.89

* Tim Blue
* From: The Australian


TWO-BOB gold stocks are normally best left alone in the view of your columnist, especially when they are digging nothing out of the ground and the owners have an entrepreneurial flavour to them. But two developments lately have caught our eye in relation to Carrick Gold, and added lustre to its prospects.

First, there's been a tick up in the price of gold towards its historical highs of $US840 an ounce. All the usual reasons apply - turmoil in the US housing market, lower American interest rates and a sliding greenback - to which one could add the Pakistan problem: an unstable Islamist state with a couple of nuclear bangers in its back pocket.

More interesting for the moment is that a big institution has just bought a bit of Carrick. On December 27, it told the ASX that JP Morgan Asset Management (UK) had acquired 8.8 million shares, or 7.18 per cent. Clearly here's an insto that likes the story and no doubt has a host of reasons for doing so.

So what could they be? A lot of people are talking of gold as being on its way to $US1000 an ounce, which has been said a thousand times but the latest $US20 rise has again sent hopes springing eternally.

Carrick has an inferred gold resource of 3 million ounces about 50km from Kalgoorlie and gold and nickel prospects near Kurnalpi, all in the WA Goldfields. Production is due to start in 2009. In May, it bought Shannon Resources Ltd (SHA), another listed gold explorer with whom it shared a common parent - Perth businessman Frank Carr who made a name for himself founding the rubbish collection business Miniskips in the 1980s with partner Bob Richmond. It collected small household loads of rubbish - think tailings from home renovations - and won the title of Entrepreneur of the Year in 1986.

Just before the JP Morgan purchase, Carr owned more than 40 per cent of Carrick, and seemed keen on attracting a takeover bid. Perhaps the JP Morgan interest means he will turn instead towards production.

Carrick's shares were as high as $2.27 in late October 2008, but have since eased to $1.89, for a market capitalisation of $231 million.

And gold is now how much.