This item is part of Stockwatch's value added news feed and is only available to Stockwatch subscribers.Here is a sample of this item:by Stockwatch Business ReporterThe TSX Venture Exchange climbed 20.35 points to 871.07 Tuesday. Ron Ho's first capital pool shell, the halted Spada Gold Ltd. (SPL), has completed its qualifying transaction, acquiring three gold properties in the Ivory Coast (see She...Read More

The latest news and price moves to start the Asian day on Thursday January 4.Base metal prices on the London Metal Exchange were mostly lower at the close on Wednesday January 3, with lead and tin the only metals to finish the day in positive territory. Read more in our live futures report.Here are how prices looked at the end of the day on Wednesday.Glencore said it will add 100,000 tonnes o...Read More

by: Paul ZimniskyThrough mid-December 2017, rough diamond prices are up 2.7%* year-to-date, while polished prices are down 3.5%**. However, despite shrinking manufacturer margins, the midstream segment of the industry still bought $5.3B worth of diamonds from De Beers this year, including $450M at the final sight which was 7% over the comparable sight last year and 81% over 2015. De Beers' full-...Read More

by: Paul ZimniskyThrough mid-December 2017, rough diamond prices are up 2.7%* year-to-date, while polished prices are down 3.5%**. However, despite shrinking manufacturer margins, the midstream segment of the industry still bought $5.3B worth of diamonds from De Beers this year, including $450M at the final sight which was 7% over the comparable sight last year and 81% over 2015. De Beers' full-...Read More

New NP - the Areva NP subsidiary holding the Areva Group's nuclear reactor operations - has been renamed Framatome following its sale to EDF, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and Assystem. Framatome is the name of a former French reactor vendor from which Areva was originally created.French utility EDF agreed in July 2015 to take a stake of between 51% and 75% in Areva SA's reactor unit in a gove...Read More

Base metals prices on the London Metal Exchange ended mostly higher on Thursday December 4, with only tin bucking the overall upward trend. The three-month nickel price gained more than $200 and copper ended $41.50 higher, albeit below $7,200 per tonne. "We remain positive on copper over the very short-term, expecting the rebound to continue at the start of the year. Our momentum-based indicators...Read More

Copper bulls may have set the metal's prices up for a fall in 2018 after a staggering December rally saw prices reach four-year highs, market analyst told Metal Bulletin. The London Metal Exchange's three-month copper price ended 2017 up 30.8% for the year having peaked at $7,312.5 per tonne on December 28. Concerns that up to 40% of global copper mine supply has the potential to be disrupted thro...Read More

Brazil's primary aluminium exports fell by 35% in 2017, reaching the lowest level on record as the two remaining local producers focused on the domestic market. Shipments totaled 210,201 tonnes in 2017 compared with 323,322 tonnes in 2016, according to figures from the country's foreign trade ministry, MDIC. This is the lowest annual aluminium export volume since 1989, the initial year on the mini...Read More

Concerns over supplies for the year ahead and a strong purchasing appetite from traders and mills continued to provide momentum to noble alloys prices in the first few days of January. Molybdic oxide prices staged the most impressive gains in the (usually quiet) first days of the year, jumping to $10.70-11 per lb, in-warehouse Rotterdam, on Wednesday January 3. Prices were assessed up 10.2% f...Read More

Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.' - Francisco's "Money" Speech - from "Atlas Shrugged"You have to love it - the City of Houston issues $1.01 billion "pension obligation" bonds to "ease" the underfunding of the underfunded public pension fund. "Pension under...Read More

A few weeks ago, Meridian Mining (MNO.V) released the results of a Preliminary Economic Assessment it had commissioned on its Bom Futuro tailings project in Brazil where it plans to process the tailings to recover the tin. These tailings were the result of the historic Bom Futuro tin mine, which produced almost half a billion pounds of tin and as the metallurgical processes weren't as efficient as...Read More

The Chinese vanadium market may turn to a deficit this year, underpinned by revised standards for the tensile strength of rebar products and a ban on vanadium slag imports, sources told Metal Bulletin.The new standard proposes eliminating 335MPa-tensile strength rebar and replacing it with 600MPa-tensile strength rebar that will have greater earthquake resistance, which will mean produce...Read More

Concerns over supplies for the year ahead and a strong purchasing appetite from traders and mills continued to provide momentum to noble alloys prices in the first few days of January. Molybdic oxide prices staged the most impressive gains in the (usually quiet) first days of the year, jumping to $10.70-11 per lb, in-warehouse Rotterdam, on Wednesday January 3. Prices were assessed up 10.2% f...Read More

Although Indonesia is set to see shipments of bauxite to China grow in 2018, years of absence from the market due to its export ban means its traditional role as primary supplier is unlikely to be regained any time soon. As of the end of October 2017, China had imported 562,924 tonnes of bauxite from Indonesia since July when the first shipment from PT Aneka Tambang (PT Antam) reached China in fou...Read More

Heavy Chinese investment in Indonesian nickel smelting and stainless steel production means that an increasing quantity of nickel ore mined in the country will be consumed internally from 2018 onwards.In spite of higher production in the coming year, Indonesian nickel pig iron (NPI) exports to China will fall in 2018 as around 180,000 tonnes of nickel metal will be consumed domestically on an ...Read More

Mason Graphite's Lac Gueret graphite project near Baie Comeau, Quebec. Source: Mason Graphite Inc.Mason Graphite Inc. [LLG-TSXV; MGPHF-OTCQX] said Thursday January 4 that it has raised $45 million from a private placement offering of 18.75 million shares priced at $2.40 per share.Mason is a graphite mining and processing company focused on developing the 100%-owned Lac Gueret Project in northern Q...Read More

The December issue of BullionStar's 'Gold Market Charts' looks at developments in the world's major physical gold markets during November, the latest month for which the relevant data is available. Each month, this series of article uses gold charts from the GOLD CHARTS R US market charting website.SGE Gold WithdrawalsPhysical gold withdrawals from the vaults of the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE...Read More

Metal Bulletin proposes to amend its international cobalt price specifications as a result of changes in the market, and invitesfeedback on the following consultation.The deadline for Stage 1 feedback is Friday January 12. Click on the image above to download the full-sized PDF.Read More

The Fort Hills oil sands project is located 90 km north of Fort McMurray, Alberta. Source: Suncor Energy Inc.Teck Resources Ltd. [TECK.B-TSX; TECK-NYSE] and Suncor Energy Inc. [SU-TSX] are taking a bigger stake in the Fort Hills oil sands project in Alberta, Teck said in a progress update. With an expected mine life in excess of 50 years, the Fort Hills oil sands project in the Athabasca region of...Read More

Turkish deep-sea scrap trading remained silent again on Thursday January 4, as most suppliers were still out of the market due to heavy winter conditions and holiday outages.The country's steel mills were expected to try to book more cargoes for February, but the supply was tight and there were not many cargoes available in the market, Metal Bulletin was told."Scrap collection is slow due to heavy...Read More