First, we want to say “It took long enough!” and we’re happy to see this upside move in Natural Gas.  We had been calling this move for many months.  Our predictive modeling systems and cycle systems suggested the extended bottoming formation in Natural Gas was an excellent opportunity for skilled technical traders.  Today’s big move suggests the downside pri...Read More

China's finished steel exports continued to fall on a year-on-year basis in July, but imports maintained an upward trend, according to customs data released on Friday August 7.July exports: 4.18 million tonnes, down by 25% from July 2019,...Read More

The aluminium industry neither deserves nor can afford the shock that would come from the United States' reintroduction of Section 232 tariffs on imports from Canada, according to Aluminum Association president and chief executive officer Tom Dobbins. Citing the latest government data from the US Census Bureau, Dobbins noted that US imports of primary aluminium from Canada were nearly 5% lower in...Read More

Brazil-based steelmaker Gerdau expects the metal spread in its North America division to remain stable in the coming months after the company was able to secure ferrous scrap at competitive prices, chief executive officer Gustavo Werneck said on Wednesday August 5.The company's metal spread - the premium between finished steel prices and scrap costs - averaged $415 per short ton in North America d...Read More

Sometimes it is better to let a situation speak for itself. Alcoa, Rio Tinto Aluminium, Novelis, Constellium, Arconic, Kaiser Aluminum, Tri-Arrows Aluminum, American Metal Chemical Corp, Hydro Extrusion North America, JW Aluminum, Real Alloy, Reynolds Consumer Products, Scepter, Silberline Manufacturing Co, Smelter Service Corp and Wagstaff. The US Aluminum Association, which represents more than...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.Heavy rains in China, which can negatively affect iron ore supplies and pig iron production, and bolster demand for scrap, continued in July 2020. Although this was more an upside risk to our bearish base case one month ago, Chinese scrap prices remained strong. The firm prices gained support from the rains and from a more g...Read More

Mining plays are worth considering as indirect trades on the rising price of gold, two ETF researchers say.Read full newsRead More

Thanks to U.S. dollar's weakness, the Fed's holding of interest rates at an all-time low and discouraging private sector job additions amid the pandemic, the appeal for gold has increased.Read full newsRead More

Michael Cuggino of the Permanent Portfolio makes the case that gold is still relatively cheap, despite its 35% increase this year.Read full newsRead More

The Olympiada mine in eastern Siberia is one of the world's largest. (Image courtesy of Polyus Gold). Despite some disruptions caused by the covid-19 pandemic, Russia is expected to surpass China as the world's top gold producer by 2029, achieving average annual growth of 3.7% y-o-y between 2020 and 2029. This forecast was presented in a report by Fitch Solutions Country Risk & Industry Research...Read More

Remains of the Incahuasi mine on the Hombre Muerto salt flat. (Image by Jorgiponn, Wikimedia Commons). An MLA in Argentina's Catamarca province presented a proposal before the legislature asking for mining royalties to be raised to 51% from the current 2%.Hugo ??vila, who belongs to the Citizen Union's Front led by former left-wing president Cristina Fern??ndez de Kirchner, criticized the 2% in r...Read More

Acid mine drainage from coal mines in Ohio. (Reference image by Jack Pearce, Wikimedia Commons). Researchers at Penn State University developed a two-stage treatment process for acid mine drainage that enabled them to recover higher concentrations of rare earth elements using smaller amounts of chemicals than previously possible.In a paper published in the Chemical Engineering Journal, the scient...Read More

Here are five Fastmarkets stories you might have missed on Friday August 7 that are worth another look....Read More

Barrick Gold is due to release its second quarter results today.The gold price has softened but remains above the US$2,000 per ounce mark, reached for the first time last week.It was about $2,208/oz on the spot market at the time of writing.China's iron ore imports in July surged to a record, up 24% from a year earlier, Reuters reported, driven by shipments from miners and resilient demand as the...Read More

Here are five Fastmarkets stories you might have missed on Friday August 7 that are worth another look....Read More

Here are five Fastmarkets stories you might have missed on Friday August 7 that are worth another look....Read More

Pini Althaus, who is CEO of USA Rare Earth LLC., tells us that USA Rare Earth LLC. Pre-IPO, with facilities based in the USA, plans to be the first Mine-to-Magnet operation outside of China. The Round Top deposit has lithium and 16 of the 17 rare earths (REE's), with a high concentration of heavy rare earths like Dysprosium and Terbium. Pini plans to make USA Rare Earths the second largest lithium...Read More

Here are five Fastmarkets stories you might have missed on Friday August 7 that are worth another look....Read More

The COVID-19 pandemic came as an external shock, almost unprecedented. How can we navigate the uncertainty of the post-pandemic future? We talked to the author of bestselling books 'The Black Swan', 'Antifragile', and 'Skin in the Game', risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb.Nassim Taleb spent 20 years as a derivatives trader and, after closing 650,000 option transactions and examining 200,000 risk r...Read More

John Rubino is the founder and manager of the popular financial website DollarCollapse.com. Mr. Rubino is the co-author, with GoldMoney's James Turk, of The Money Bubble and The Collapse of the Dollar and How to Profit from It. He spent the 1980's on Wall Street as a Eurodollar trader, equity analyst and junk bond analyst. During the 1990's he was a featured columnist with TheStreet.com and a freq...Read More