On November 30th the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that it would admit China's Renminbi currency, commonly known as the Yuan, to the select basket of reserve currencies that make up its Special Drawing Rights (SDR's). Having been stalled by U.S. influence for many years, the long-awaited IMF decision acknowledges the massive transfer of financial power from the old West to the new E...Read More
Buying and selling older houses in Metro Vancouver is now worth more to the provincial economy than the B.C. forestry, natural gas and mining industries combined.Projected dollar volume of residential resales in 2015 through the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver is pegged at $38.6 billion, up 41% from a year ago, according to the BC Real Estate Association. Sales of detached houses alone in t...Read More
Shares in Turquoise Hill Resources (TSE,NYSE:TRQ) jumped nearly 5% in early trade on Wednesday after the company announced 2016 production and financial guidance for its Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine in Mongolia.By early afternoon Turquoise Hill gave up most of those gains but stayed in positive territory affording the company a $4.9 billion market value on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock is...Read More
Freeport McMoRan is closing its Sierrita copper mine outside of Tucson, Arizona, and is considering selling minority interests in certain mining assets. (Image from archives)Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (NYSE:FCX), the world's largest publically traded copper producer, took a page of Anglo American's books Wednesday and announced it will continue with spending and production cutbacks as it battles to pr...Read More
Image by Brett Weinstein | Flickr Commons.U.S. leading Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, intervened in a request from her son-in-law on behalf of a deep-sea mining firm to meet with her or other agency officials while she was secretary of state, Associated Press reported.The 2012 emails from an investor in Florida-based deep sea mining firm Neptune Minerals Inc. were forwarded to...Read More
Courtesy of: Visual CapitalistWe have said previously that Africa is the new land of opportunity for speculators and investors. Although there is no shortage of risks, the continent is home to vast amounts of resource wealth, the fastest growing class of millionaires, and even the world's fastest growing city.The Chinese must agree that there is great opportunity to be found on the second larges...Read More
Tuesday was another bleak day on commodity markets. The prices of crude oil, iron ore and industrial and precious metals all declined pushing a number of commodities to fresh multi-year lows.The world's major mining companies were trading even weaker than their wares with stock valuations of the top tier reaching decade and sometimes record lows.The commodities market is a contrarian's dream at...Read More
Future looks brighterTuesday was another bleak day on commodity markets.The price of crude oil ($37.65) and iron ore ($38.80) dropped again and the globe's two most traded raw materials are now at levels prior to the word supercycle even entering the popular lexicon.Similarly precious metals and industrial continued to drift lower with bellwether copper exchanging hands barely above seven-year l...Read More
Anglo American's overhaul reflects the dire straits the global mining industry is in these days. (Image: Screenshot from Anglo American video via YouTube)Shares in Anglo American (LON:AAL) nosedived Tuesday after the miner announced drastic measures meant to cope with an ongoing rout in commodities prices, including massive lay offs, asset sales and an expected suspension of dividend payments.The...Read More
Rob Pease and Scott Shellhaas are the recipients of the AMEBC's E.A. Scholz Award for excellence in mine development for their work in advancing the Mount Milligan copper-gold project.The Association for Mineral Exploration British Columbia Awards Celebration of Excellence Gala will be held on January 27 during the Mineral Exploration Roundup 2016 conference."The annual AME BC awards give us the o...Read More
Over to you, Draghi and Yellen.This month, like many other months recently it's the intentions of central bankers that are dominating the markets. It's widely expected that the ECB and US Fed will drift even further apart in their basic policy stances this month. I'm pretty sure that view will turn out to be correct though as always the devil will be in the details. Increasing certainty ab...Read More
Image by DmyTo | Shutterstock.comMining and commodities giant Glencore (LON:GLEN) said Monday it is cutting production and 80% of the remaining staff at its Collinsville mine in Australia's north Queensland as a result of collapsing coal prices.The cuts would affect around 180 of the 230 people employed at the mine, with most of the layoffs materializing next year, the Swiss company in an e-maile...Read More
If only someone could bottle the experience of finding an overlooked company, investing for pennies a share and cashing in for 10, 20 or 30 times what you paid. Priceless, right? But how to find those companies? Small caps aren't covered by the mainstream press and analysts the way blue chips are, and determining value of an early-stage company before profit and loss statements take on real meanin...Read More
Amid a tempestuous year for the U.S. dollar gold price, gold has quietly moved up about 6% in Canadian dollar terms, squarely placing the focus on gold producers with Canadian operations that generate cash flow, says Ryan Hanley, mining analyst with Mackie Research Capital. In this interview with The Gold Report, Hanley lists his storm-tested top picks, shines light on names with M&A potential, an...Read More
Since the beginning of 2014, the World Bank's Metals and Minerals index has fallen 29% and the Precious Metals index 11%. South Africa's weighted average basket of commodities has also dropped 12% in rand terms despite its significant depreciation. The response has been carnage - Anglo American, for instance, announced its plans to shut 18 shafts, which will result in up to 50 000 job losses. Ad...Read More
The new Argentinian government is promising to end a series of capital controls that have been propping up the peso - a move that would benefit mining.Reuters reported on Sunday that president-elect Mauricio Macri will lift the clamp-down on dollar purchases by out-going president Cristina Fern??ndez, as early as December 14.Fern??ndez restricted imports and repatriated export revenue since she wa...Read More
Earlier this year, Anglo announced a $3.5bn write-down related to the value of its flagship Minas-Rio iron ore project in Brazil. (Image courtesy of Anglo American)Global miner Anglo American (LON:AAL) will likely announce next week that it's cutting its annual dividend since a worsening commodities rout has left management little choice but to focus on balance-sheet preservation in order to navig...Read More
Facing Reality in Five Uneasy StagesSupercycle meets Kubler-RossDenial & Acceptance and Everything In Between+ The marketplace is finally realising that the Commodities Supercycle is dead+ Mining though will rebound just in a different form to that which prevailed from 2001-2011+ The travails of some commodities (oil for example) are good for the rest of the mining sectorIt has taken the...Read More
Mine pit. Aerial | Wikimedia Commons.The Peruvian city of Cerro de Pasco, perched high up in the Andes, is about to sink into the deeps of a half-century-old, open-pit zinc and lead mine that has been belching streamers of dust and polluting its surroundings for years.The locals, National Geographic reports, were submitted to a series of health tests in 1996 when the effects of contamination bec...Read More
The deposit was first discovered in the 1930s and Freeport McMoRan has been mining copper, silver and gold at Grasberg in remote Indonesia since the 1970s. In terms of reserves, Grasberg is still the richest deposit on the planetShares in copper and gold giant Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE:FCX) were trending lower on Thursday after reports that Indonesia is likely to delay a decision on extending the lic...Read More