Gold has big year in 2020 and outlook for this year robust. Learn about monetary expansion and gold future prices.Read More

The gold futures price reached US$1,767/ounce this week before retreating, which was the second time it has surpassed US$1,760 in the past two months, marking some of gold's highest levels in several years.Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.Key ferro-alloy forecast highlights for the coming months:?EUR? A strong recovery in both bulk and noble alloys is expected in 2021 but the markets are unlikely to return to the levels seen before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. We have seen a quicker-than-expected recovery across various regions amid the economic fal...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.Fastmarkets analysts were invited to present our outlook for the coking coal market at Coaltrans Asia, held online on November 23-25. One of the key topics at the event was the trade tensions between China and Australia, which overtook Mongolia to become the largest coking coal exporter to China this year...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.Iron ore remains the most bullish commodity of the year, with prices fuelled by Chinese demand and supply disruptions in Brazil, along with bullish sentiment. But prices are expected to come down because Brazilian exports have begun to recover, and have reached their highest level since the Brumadinho dam disaster in 2019. W...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.In the iron ore market, supply issues including heavy rains at the start of the year, followed by staffing problems during the Covid-19 pandemic, have affected exports from Brazil. This has helped Australia gain a larger market share, but since June, Brazilian export volumes have returned to levels last seen before the...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.Chinese blast furnace (BF) utilization rates have stagnated and iron ore port stock volumes are rising, reaching their highest levels since March, which suggests that iron ore supply is becoming excessive while demand is not growing. Unsurprisingly, prices dropped last week and we expect the trend to continue. The market has...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts is ready to view.With nickel prices down by almost 20% over the space of around ten days during late February and early March, one might have been expecting us to be reporting sharply-lower prices of stainless steel, at least for the most common nickel-containing grades of stainless steel.This is not the case, at least in Europe and the Unite...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts is ready to view.We spoke in our previous tracker of stainless steel prices ending 2020 on a high. That trend has continued during early 2021 and, in fact, the upward rally in prices has increased its momentum.Compared with the monthly price increase of some 5% seen at the end of 2020, prices for grade-304 stainless steel in al...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts is ready to view.Prices of stainless steel are generally set to reach highs for the year as 2020 comes to a close. For the most common nickel-containing grades of stainless steel, this upward trend is being driven above all by rising nickel prices, which themselves are hitting relatively high levels into the end of 2020.The price increases si...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts is ready to view.While much commentary has been written about Asian economies performing far better than those elsewhere this year during the global Covid-19 pandemic, it is stainless steel markets in Europe and the United States that are ending the year in better shape than their Asian counterparts.We do not talk of demand levels or demand g...Read More

RAPAPORT... Gemfields brought in $58.9 million at its first auction of rough rubies in more than a year, expressing optimism as operations at its Mozambique mine gradually resumed.The miner held seven small sales of high-, medium- and commercial-quality goods between March 15 and April 8, noting on Thursday that its last ruby auction had been in December 2019. Viewings took place in Bang...Read More

RAPAPORT... The US government has placed sanctions on an important state-owned gemstone company in Myanmar, its latest attempt to deprive the military of funding.American businesses may no longer transact with Myanma Gems Enterprise (MGE), an entity "responsible for all gemstone activities" in the country, the US Treasury Department said Thursday. A subdivision of Myanmar's Ministry of Mines,...Read More

RAPAPORT... Pandora's revenue increased in the first quarter, even as more than one-third of its stores remain shut due to Covid-19 restrictions.The company's sales rose 13% on an organic basis to DKK 4.5 billion ($719.3 million) versus the same quarter in 2020, the jeweler said last week. Like-for-like sales grew 21% year on year. Sales for the three months ending March 31, 2020, were impacted by...Read More

RAPAPORT... Alrosa's sales grew last month as manufacturers continued to restock inventory amid rising consumer demand in the US and China."Jewelry sales results at key markets, including the US and China, indicate persistently high demand from end consumers," said Alrosa deputy CEO Evgeny Agureev. "Alrosa retains its commitment to a prudent sales strategy, aimed at keeping the industry balance th...Read More

(IDEX Online) - Five banks and two diamond brokers in Italy are alleged to have made $590m by selling clients gems for investment at vastly-inflated prices, according to a Reuters report.Four of the banks - Banco BPM, Banca Aletti, UniCredit and Monte dei Paschi (MPS) - and one broker - IDB - are facing possible prosecution over the alleged fraudulent diamond sales, together with over 100 former e...Read More

(IDEX Online) - Alrosa announced total sales of $345m in March, down slightly on the previous month ($372m), but still in line with its expectations amid ongoing consumer demand.Revenues from rough and polished diamonds were more than double those of March 2020, when the global pandemic struck, and sales dipped to $153m.The Russian state-owned miner said stocks of polished diamonds stocks were at...Read More

(IDEX Online) - Virtual try-on of jewelry . . . the jewelry store as a shopping experience . . . less discounting of jewelry . . . these are a few of the ideas tossed out by the Wall Street Journal in a recent article called "A New Future for Retail After Covid." Actually, the article wasn't specifically addressed to jewelers; we added the word "jewelry" to the topics the newsp...Read More

Environmentalists and tribal leaders are fighting a plan by K2 Gold to sell its mining claims to a large corporation for development.Read full newsRead More

With gold's reputation as a store of value and recent gold-focused merger and acquisition activity, there is renewed investor interest in companies active in this exploration.Read full newsRead More

With gold's reputation as a store of value and recent gold-focused merger and acquisition activity, there is renewed investor interest in companies active in this exploration.Read full newsRead More

Right now is a great time to think about rebalancing one’s portfolio. We’ve had a pretty incredible run over this past year, and investors may be thinking about rotating some gains into sectors that have underperformed of late but are poised for long-term growth.These three picks are ones I’d certainly put in this category. For those seeking long-term gems at more affordable pric...Read More