Ventana Gold (VEN.to): Master Blaster

Eike (for it is he)

Today's insider trades filings on Ventana Gold (VEN.to) are interesting and explain why VEN went through a moment of intraday weakness yesterday that saw the stock under $9. Here's the segment from Canadian Insider:

Ventana Gold Corp. (VEN)						As of December 10th, 2009
Filing Date	Transaction Date	Insider Name	Ownership Type	Securities	Nature of transaction	# or value acquired or disposed of	Unit Price
Dec 10/09	Dec 04/09	63X Master Fund	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Disposition in the public market	-1,000,000	$10.200
Dec 10/09	Oct 15/09	63X Master Fund	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Acquisition in the public market	2,155,300	$6.021
Dec 10/09	Oct 05/09	63X Master Fund	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Acquisition in the public market	4,875,300	$5.467
Dec 10/09	Aug 12/09	63X Master Fund	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Acquisition in the public market	1,814,200	$4.271
Dec 10/09	Jul 22/09	63X Master Fund	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	00 - Opening Balance-

The 63X Master Fund is the investment fund run by our pal and Brazilian squillionaire Eike Batista. What we see here is the 8.8m or so shares that Eike bought mostly (8.2m) back in July (and for some reason only registered in August/October) period have finally been filed (and by the looks of things he's not going to sweat over a CAD$1,000 late filing fee, is he?). But we also see that he's dumped a million of the shares in the last few days. The reason for this apparent vote of no confidence must be the legal action that's surfaced between VEN.to and local owners of the 'La Bodega' property, Sociedad Mineral La Bodega (SMLB) and its controllers, the Gelvez family of the Colombian region in question.

Not much doubt that it's a net negative to see Batista selling like this, however much you want to spin it as "wisely taking profits, still owns plenty" to feed some illusion or other. BUT, one thing that does strike me is that all of a suddenly sudden, Batista (via his 63X Master Fund) is suddenly keen on being transparent about his trades when previously he didn't give a damn about filing his inside position correctly. One guess here....and it is a pure guess...is that Eike wants to get a few nerves flowing through the marketplace about VEN.to stock. He'd actually like to see the price drop. If that's so, as he currently owns 7.8m or so VEN shares he's either shooting himself in the foot (virtually impossible) or he's looking to add at a lower price later.

OK, this could go down as an extrapolated conspiracy theory and Occam and his razor may well disagree with me here. Another thing to note is that the 1m share sale puts Eike under 10% owned and no longer an insider of record (i.e. he can do what he wants out of the public gaze) But Eike isn't one of the world's most successful investors by sheer chance, y'knowz.

So the bottom line is that this story has a long way to travel yet, but Eike has added a very short term negative to the mix with his sale. DYODD.