UK small caps are heading north mid-morning, in contrast with bigger Footsie, with Connemara Mining PLC (LON:CON) the runaway winner - adding 175% to stand at 3.65p.
It was by far the biggest gainer in London and came of the back of news from drilling in Northern Ireland, which confirmed "without a doubt" a gold bearing vein system.
It comes from the results from a short-hole drilling programme on the group's gold licences in Inishowen, County Donegal.
FTSE AIM100 was up 0.48% at 3,388, while the FTSE AIM All share added 0.25%to stand at 717.220.
Meanwhile, bigger bother Footsie was trailing a tad at the time of writing - down around five at 6,156 as the pendulum swung. The biggest laggard was education publisher Pearson (LON: PSON), down 5.47% to stand at 820.5p.
Also in small cap mining, Sunrise Resources (LON:SRES) gained over 13% at 0.13p as boss Patrick Cheetham said he was “particularly excited” by the firm’s “exposure to the resurgent gold sector in Nevada” and set up a Sunrise subsidiary to acquire projects there.
On the flip side, 88Energy (LON:88E) dropped 17.69% to 2.68p after the firm today issued a statement to clarify a number of points following yesterday’s announcement regarding the third party assessment by DeGolyer & MacNaughton (D&M).
Sticking to the sector, Solo Oil (LON:SOLO) unsurprisingly fell back 22.54% to 0.28p as it raised £800,000 through the issue of new shares - the cash to support investments in Tanzania.
Mirada Plc (LON:MIRA), the digital TV services provider, saw shares ease almost 11% to 4.125p as it announced the soft commercial launch of its Iris Multiscreen solution for its Tier 1 customer in Mexico.
The launch of the over-the-top (OTT) content solution has been keenly awaited since the company started rolling out the service for izzi Telecom on 17 February 2015.
Noricum Gold (LON:NMG) added 12.9% to stand at 0.18p, building on gains from yesterday, with saw the group move to mine planning stage at the Kvemo Bolnisi project after completing a drill programme on the outcropping gold mineralisation.
The explorer wants first production from the deposit in the Republic of Georgia by the third quarter this year and said it remained on track to achieve that.
Traders are today digesting last night minutes from last month’s Fed Reserve meeting, which indicated a split committee - which according to analysts means a US interest rate rise is unlikely in April.
Later today, the European Central Bank will release its March minutes and ECB president Mario Draghi speaks publicly.
Later still, Fed chair Janet Yellen is also set to give a speech.