Copper slightly disappointed investors, ending the first half of the year with a decline of 3.50 percent. Worries about global inflation and, more specifically, the potential slowing of China’s economy weighed on copper’s price. The red metal rose 5 percent quickly in the new year, but similar to zinc, lead, palladium and platinum prices, declined sharply at the beginning of May.
[Read more...]Don’t Turn Out the Lights on Commodities Just Yet
May 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment
The prices for many commodities suffered the worst week in recent memory last week. Oil prices dipped below $100 per barrel, gold fell below $1,500 an ounce and silver gave back much of the past month’s gains by falling to the $35 an ounce level. The prices for other commodities such as sugar, tin, nickel, aluminum, lead and copper also pulled back.
[Read more...]What’s Driving Russia’s Outperformance?
March 29, 2011 By Leave a Comment
The Russian MICEX Index, which increased 22.5 percent in 2010, has jumped 15 percent so far in 2011, significantly outperforming many other markets.
The Case for Commodities in 2010
January 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment
The biggest emerging economies have ambitious plans that require a greater share of the world’s limited commodities. This trend is spurring profound and permanent disruptions in how these resources are allocated now and in the future. For investors, these disruptions present opportunities.
Simply put, an investment in natural resources is a vote of confidence in global economic growth.
[Read more...]Chile Gold Production Increase
November 10, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Chile to triple gold production by 2015
SANTIAGO -
According to research undertaken by the state organisation, the Chilean Copper Commission (Cochilco), the country's gold production could triple by 2015, putting the South American nation possibly into the world's top seven global producers.
Chile's current gold production is put at 39.2 tonnes, but new developments and expansions - most notably Barrick's Pascua Lama project - could bring output to 103 tonnes by 2015. Indeed this could even be an underestimation with a number of other potential projects waiting in the wings.
Much of Chile's current production is byproduct output from the country's huge copper mining industry, the world's largest, but more recent discoveries of potential gold/copper orebodies high in the Andes, which have been made viable by the big recent increase in the gold price, could mean that the country's output increases substantially in the years ahead. However the big problem at the moment is the shortage of capital for major gold developments of this type which require billions of dollars to get them on stream. [Read more...]
It May Take a Dragon to Breathe Fire Into Markets
At the Cambridge House’s Vancouver Resource Investment Conference this week, I am part of a special debate on whether China will boom or bust with bestselling author Gordon G. Chang. The title of Chang’s book, The Coming Collapse of China, states his position quite clearly and I look forward to the intellectual challenge of convincing him otherwise.
[Read more...]