The AOCE and WB have moderate overall forecasts for the metals in 2025 inline with IMF forecasts for a decline in economic growth and inflation, although we see the probability of a stagflationary scenario as still reasonably high.Read More

The past year was a difficult one overall for the metals, with the main standouts to the upside being a geopolitical risk-driven gain in gold, a China-driven rise in iron ore and a surge in uranium on broadening global support for nuclear power (Figure 1). A jump in global interest rates to near two-decade highs saw recession fears persist all year, and while one still did not actually eru...Read More

This year the post-global health crisis boom was brought to an end by a surge in inflation to forty-year highs, a major rise in global interest rates in an attempt to curb the rising prices and surging geopolitical risk after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. While precious metals held up reasonably well as markets turned to them as a risk hedge, by Q2/22 the higher interest rates put an end t...Read More

Chile is the world leader in copper production, at 28.5% of the total in 2020, and this looks set to continue, with the country having the largest global reserves, at 23.0% of total. It is also the global leader for molybdenum, which is often found along with copper, and is a major lithium player, holding 51.1% of global reserves. Read More

Newfoundland has become a gold exploration hotspot over the past few years, with the sector seeing some of its strongest activity ever. While the province remains a small contributor to Canadian gold production, it has a substantial mineral industry well supported by the government, focused on iron ore, copper and nickel, and the surge in exploration suggests that gold output from the...Read More

Nevada is the core of the U.S. gold output, accounting for by far the majority, at 75.4% on average for the past year. The state looks set to remain a dominant player in U.S. gold, as it accounts for 49% of total U.S. reserves, with Alaska slightly ahead with 51% of reserves, but just 8.6% of current production. The U.S. accounts for 6.1% of global gold output, making Nevada one of the largest gol...Read More

The Golden Triangle in northwestern British Columbia has historically been a major site of Canadian gold production, beginning as early as the mid 1800s. There was a wave of production in the 1990s which cooled as the gold price declined, but larger scale production resumed in 2017, and the area has seen surging exploration interest over the past year, given that the region has some of the largest...Read More

In this report we outline the Quebec gold mining industry, including its major producers, and a survey of many of the junior miners focused on the province. Quebec accounts for 34% of Canadian gold production (second to Ontario, with 44%) and remains a major focus for both producers and junior miners.Read More

Red Lake has been one of the most prolific gold mining districts in Canada and the world, with exploration having started in the 1920s, and production, which began in the 1930s, continuing to the present day. The district is known for the high grade of its gold, its infrastructure, and strong institutional support, given the long history of mining in the area.Read More

(IDEX Online) - A jeweler was robbed at gunpoint hours after he posted a $150,000 Patek Philippe watch for sale on Instagram.Two men waited outside his store, at Jeweler's Row, in the center of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, and followed him to his home 30 miles away in Newtown, Bucks County."They sat outside of our store for three hours, where I had walked in and out of the store a few tim...Read More

(IDEX Online) - India's Greenlab Diamonds has signed a $120m deal to manufacture lab growns for Saudi Arabia's Dana Al Alami Jewelry.Greenlab has four factories in Surat producing 200,000 carats of lab growns a month. It also the company that grew the 7.5-carat diamond that India's prime minister Narendra Modi presented to US First Lady Jill Biden Prime during a state visit in June....Read More

(IDEX Online) - De Beers says its full-year production forecast for 2023 remains unchanged - at 30m to 33m carats - despite a 23 per cent drop in Q3 output.Most of that was because of its Venetia mine, in South Africa, switching from open-pit to underground production. Output there fell 78 per cent, from 1.65m carats in Q3 2022 to 365,000 carats.Overall De Beers' production fell from 9.1m car...Read More

Of course, you realize that if this tragic business in the Middle East gets out of hand millions of people might die, maybe even you and me. Any way you cut it, looks like Islam wants to rumble.Basic problem: The little slab of land on the Mediterranean at issue is in the possession of one group of people and another group of people wants to drive them out. There is no "two state solution" because...Read More

Fireweed Metals (TSXV: FWZ; US-OTC: FWEDF) is planning a resource update early next year on its Macmillan Pass zinc-lead-silver project in the Yukon, CEO Brandon Macdonald says.Next door along the Yukon-Northwest Territories border, Firweed is advancing the world's largest high-grade tungsten project, Mactung. It's aiming to publish a preliminary economic assessment early next year, Macdonald said...Read More

In the course of almost four years, and really dating back a decade and a half, I've managed to read most of the writings of the intellectuals, titans of industry and government officials who constructed the strange reality of 2020 and after.They wanted to conduct a science experiment on the human population. Because infectious disease knows no borders, they knew for sure it would have to be a glo...Read More

(IDEX Online) - Fancy color diamonds saw a second quarter of slower growth, according to the Fancy Color Research Foundation (FCRF) but remained well ahead of colorless diamonds, which are in long-term decline.   The FCRF Index, which tracks prices across all colors, sizes and intensities, rose by 0.4 per cent during Q3, compared with increases of 0.5 per cent in Q2 and 1.3 per cent in Q...Read More

We learn today the gross domestic product expanded at an annualized 4.9% rate last quarter.CNBC:Gross domestic product, a measure of all goods and services produced in the U.S., rose at a seasonally adjusted 4.9% annualized pace in the July-through-September period, up from an unrevised 2.1% pace in the second quarter, the Commerce Department reported Thursday...The sharp increase came due to cont...Read More

(In association with Quantumrock) Professional investors are being offered a new and lucrative opportunity to put their capital into rough emeralds and ultra-rare alexandrite.Quantumrock, an pioneering investment solutions company, says it aims to achieve value increases in excess of 25 per cent a year, over a two-year term.It has launched what it describes as the first structured, professional in...Read More

(IDEX Online) - Okavango Diamond Company (ODC) has halted all rough sales as global demand remains at record low levels.It says it has cancelled its November auction and may do likewise in December."For the first time, we have had to build up inventory as we do not want to just irresponsibly release goods into a market which is already oversupplied," managing director Mmetla Masire said in an inte...Read More

(IDEX Online) - A man spent the night locked inside a jewelry vault at the World Diamond Tower, at 580 Fifth Avenue, New York.An employee is understood to have closed the doors at around 8.45pm on Tuesday night (24 October), unaware the man was inside accessing his safety deposit box.Firefighters spent 10 hours trying to penetrate the 30-inch steel-reinforced concrete walls, in the basement of the...Read More

I must disclose this immediately: I utterly loathe the World Economic Forum. To quote Obi-Wan Kenobi, "You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."From Jacinda Ardern, the Woman Who Would Be Queen (of New Zealand), to Chrystia Freeland, granddaughter of one Nazi and chief cheerleader for another, to Justin Trudeau, the chip off the old block, all who associate with the World Econo...Read More

(IDEX Online) - Charles Michel, President of the European Council, said the G7 and EU were committed to taking coordinated action to curb Russia's earnings from the diamond trade.He told 450 delegates at the FACETS 2023 Diamonds For Change conference in Botswana yesterday (25 October): "Natural resources should never finance war or human rights abuses. Rather they should breathe life into pea...Read More

"Luxurious languor"…We hazard the epoch of luxurious languor 18th-century philosopher David Hume's delicious expression is closing.It acquired its existence through the post-2008 imposition of artificially reduced interest rates.Rates at or near zero reigned for an entire decade and longer. Credit was essentially... costless.The United States economy got accustomed to it even dependent...Read More

(IDEX Online) - The US jewelry sector shrank yet again in Q3 of this year, with the overall loss of 485 retailers and almost 140 wholesalers and manufacturers, as measured by Jewelers Board of Trade (JBT) listings.  The total number of businesses fell by 2.6 per cent compared with the same three months in 2022, according to new statistics and trend data published earlier this week by JBT...Read More

Grid Metals (TSXV: GRDM; US-OTC: MSMGF) has got a plan B to start producing battery metal in case Ottawa torpedoes its leading option with China's Sinomine Resources. Toronto-based Grid is in talks to spend $4.65 million for the idled True North gold mine held by 1911 Gold (TSXV: AUMB), Grid president and CEO Robin Dunbar said on a site visit this month. The mill's 450,000 tonnes annual capacity w...Read More

(IDEX Online) - Groups representing the diamond and jewelry industries have issued messages of support after Hamas terrorist massacred 1,400 people in Israel.The American Gem Trade Association (AGTA) said it stood in "full support of Israel and our Israeli friends, family, and colleagues during these trying times".It put out a joint statement with the Diamond Manufacturers and Importers Associatio...Read More

Where were you on March 9, 2022, when President Biden signed the death warrant on American freedom?On that day, in a hushed ceremony at the White House without the approval of Congress, the states or the American people, Biden signed into law Executive Order 14067.Buried in his order are a few paragraphs, titled Section 4. The language in Section 4 makes Order 14067 the most treacherous act by a s...Read More

(IDEX Online) - India's polished diamond exports could fall by as much as 35 per cent this financial year, the ratings agency Crisil, to $14bn to $15bn.It blames weak consumer demand in the US, EU and China (which together account for 75 per cent of foreign sales), rough supplies disrupted by the war in Ukraine and the plunging price of lab growns.The Mumbai-based agency notes that Israel...Read More

(IDEX Online) -  A 20.19-carat fancy intense VVS1 pink diamond will lead the Phillips' inaugural Geneva Jewels auction next month, with an estimate of $11m to $16.5m.It is one of the four largest fancy intense pink diamonds ever to be auctioned and is the most valuable jewel ever presented by Phillips.The cut-cornered rectangular modified brilliant-cut diamond (pictured) is accented with...Read More