The mid-tier gold miners' stocks have soared in recent months on gold's decisive bull-market breakout. They are this sector's sweet spot for stock-price upside potential, with room for strong production growth which investors love. That's an attractive contrast to the stagnating major gold miners. The mid-tiers' recently-reported Q2'19 results reveal whether their fundamentals justify th...Read More

By Mike Gleason, Money Metals Exchange Gold and silver markets test some near-term technical support levels late this week, investors are focused on takeaways from the Jackson Hole symposium. Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell headlined a list of other central bankers, academics, and financial elites at the annual Wyoming gathering. Powell was widely expected to signal a rate cut ahead d...Read More

David HaggithPretty good if you ask me. Most economic indicators this year have moved relentlessly in the direction of recession, and now the Cass Freight Index is saying a US recession may start in the 3rd quarter, fitting up nicely to my prediction that we would be entering recession this summer.Cass comes on boardThe Cass Freight Index is one of the most robust proxies for the US and global e...Read More

By: Ira EpsteinGold in a distribution pattern. How do we come out of it is the question:Read More

Daniel R. AmermanThe front page of the August 16th Wall Street Journal contains the information found in the remarkable graph below.As can be clearly seen, year to date around the world - including in Austria, Japan, Germany, and the U.S. and the U.K. - we are in practice seeing some of the most astonishing short-term returns ever seen when it comes to long and ultralong bonds.The title of the...Read More

Dave KranzlerBullion Star released a graph Tuesday that showed Switzerland exported 90 tonnes of gold to the London gold market (U.K.) in July, which dwarfed exports to India and China. Bloomberg's spin on the data was that the gold was needed for ETFs. Of course, as is typical, the Bloomberg "journalist" likely regurgitated "information" that came from a source rather than fact-chec...Read More

The dream of building a new world-class copper-gold mine in Pakistan in an area bordering Afghanistan and Iran has been dashed, for now at least. The saga of Tethyan Copper Co's (TCC) efforts to develop the Reko Diq mine found resolution last week with an International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) ruling in favor of TCC following a dispute that has rumbled on for years.TCC,...Read More

The London Metal Exchange has just finished its trial to calculate nickel prices using a volume weighted average price (VWAP) method on the exchange's electronic trading platform. If early indications are anything to go by, metals market participants did not embrace this method of price discovery in the way some had anticipated. For three months since Monday March 18, closing prices for nickel car...Read More

The United States Secretary of Commerce has joined the growing chorus of voices questioning the current method of setting the US Midwest aluminium premium. Wilbur Ross said the US Midwest aluminium premium is at inflated levels that do not justify the cost of transportation and logistical handling costs that it was originally designed to reflect.  His view is being echoed by a number of...Read More

Bakkt is set to launch on September 23rdBitcoin hash rate reached a new ATH this month ahead of halvingNew Zealand tax authority lets citizens receive crypto salariesBTC/USD bull market is far from overAugust 2019 has been full of positive crypto news so far. The Bakkt launch will bring legitimacy to crypto and attract additional institutional capital. The BTC hash rate hitting a new all-time high...Read More

Because gold closed above the average price, the trend momentum was bullish as we came into this week.It also tells us that if gold closes below $1,520, it would negate this bullish trend momentum, and a second close below $1,520 would activate the levels below.Gold did close below $1,520, and we came down to the levels that we saw on the 20th into that low $1,500 level.Gold did not quite come dow...Read More

The London Metal Exchange three-month nickel price lost gains made over the course of the trading day to close at $15,665 per tonne on Friday August 23, down 1.3% from the intraday high of $15,860 per tonne, despite a healthy 11,294-lot turnover, the highest since August 8. A significant 22,620 lots were traded on August 8 when a short-covering rally driven by Chinese investment buyers pushed the...Read More

Barring zinc and nickel, base metal stocks at Shanghai Futures Exchange-approved warehouses were lower week on week on Friday August 23, with the biggest fall in deliverable lead stocks, which slumped by 9.6% or 3,544 tonnes to 33,065 tonnes. According to the SHFE's latest inventory report, the Zhejiang Tianchuan warehouse in Zhejiang recorded the most lead stock withdrawals this week with 3,401 t...Read More

Seaborne coking coal prices were flat on Friday August 23, leaving segments of the market wondering if they have bottomed out.Fastmarkets indicesPremium hard coking coal, fob DBCT: $153.67 per tonne, unchangedPremium hard coking coal, cfr Jingtang: $166.12 per tonne, unchangedHard coking coal, fob DBCT: $138.76 per tonne, unchangedHard coking coal, cfr Jingtang: $153 per tonne, unchangedLow-vol PC...Read More

China's month-on-month new electric vehicles (NEV) sales rebounded in August after month-on-month declines in June and July. The drop in sales between May and June was the first drop since September 2016, but Fastmarkets MB had expected Chinese NEV sales to dip temporarily after the June subsidy changes came into effect because consumers and NEV manufacturers would have to adjust to the new subsid...Read More

The increasing consumption of scrap and a potential shift toward the electric-arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking route from the basic oxygen furnace (BOF) route in China are medium- to long-term threats to demand for steelmaking raw materials, while in the near team coking coal import volumes will continue to be affected by iron ore procurement strategies.This was the basis of Fastmarkets research team...Read More

Iron ore prices fell sharply in the second half of November after climbing through October, with prices for higher-grade material pioneering the decline.Fastmarkets MB daily benchmark for 65% Fe fines dropped by 22% by Monday November 26 after peaking on October 29. The 62% Fe iron ore index declined by 16% over the period, as some Chinese steelmakers started to seek larger volumes of cheaper ores...Read More

The steel scrap sector in the United States still depends on exports to Turkey, a member of the Fastmarkets research team said during the ferrous session at the Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) conference in London.This dependence persists despite the changes in the international markets created by the US' imposition of its Section 232 tariffs on imports of steel products, metals analyst Le...Read More

David reminds us of how ridiculously undervalued silver is along with silver's tiny share of global financial wealth...by Patrick V. via SBTV with David MorganReturning SBTV guest, David Morgan of The Morgan Report, reminds us of how ridiculously undervalued silver is today. Also covered in this interview was the power pyramid of the financial elite of which governments are at the lowest rung!Disc...Read More

Preliminary signs are emerging...by Rob Keyens via Gold Silver Pros with Chris MarcusAre we nearing a break point in the silver market?It might be a bit early to say for sure, but there certainly are preliminary signs emerging.As I discussed in this interview with Robert Kientz of goldsilverpros.com...Read More