Mining Review – Sunday Roundup 17th January
Despite being the traditional buying season for gold, Gold has had another poor week, and dragged down most of the gold stocks with it.
The key support level of $1,850 has been breached, a weaker US dollar would normally result in a higher gold price, but these aren’t normal times…
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Mining Review – Sunday Roundup 17th January
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Despite being the traditional buying season for gold, the precious metal has had another poor week, and dragged down most of the gold stocks with it. The US PPI number was lower than expected, and caused gold to sell off on Friday to end a week where it had danced around the $1,850 support line, until Friday’s drop.
The key support level of $1,850 has now been breached, and gold finished the week on $1,827, and we now await next week’s US Presidential inauguration.
I have read recently that copper is a good forward indicator of inflation, followed by oil, and so it’s interesting to note the rise in the copper price over the last year, and now oil is following too. Interestingly, gold and silver prices are way down the list, which surprised me.
The ‘hot’ metals right now are rhodium, lithium, and copper, see below for details.
Bitcoin and crypto prices continue to gyrate, with Bitcoin starting the week at $41,000 and finishing it at $36,000, Quite how anyone sees this is a safe haven asset beats me, but I guess that may be a generational thing!
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Stocks on our watchlist in the news
Cornish Metals is to list on the London AIM Market. Their broker will be the mining broker of choice in London, SP Angel.
03 Mining has announced the sale of its Garrison Project in Ontario to Moneta Porcupine, in an all share deal where 03 retain an interest going forwards.
Nouveau Monde Graphite announced a C$20 million financing.
Fiore Gold reported production within guidance, given production is tilted towards H2 2021, due to maintenance work at the Pan Mine and leach pad.
Orla Mining reported an increase in their gold reserves of 54%.
Cabral Gold reported recent drilling results from Machichie at their Cuiu Cuiu gold project in Para State, Brazil.
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Precious Metals
The star of the show recently has been rhodium, which had a stonking week, up 25%! Sadly there aren’t really any opportunities to invest in mining companies currently mining the metal, as three companies, Sibanye, Impala, and Amplats, all listed on the JSE, between them produce 68% of the world’s supply, as a bi product of mining other PGM’s.
| Gold | 1827 | ↓ | -1% |
| Silver | 24.75 | ↓ | -1% |
| Palladium | 2390 | ↑ | 6% |
| Rhodium | 21200 | ↑ | 25% |
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Base Metals
Performed better than the precious metals, with manganese the standout, rising 16% in a week after several weeks of modest falls, despite an anticipated rise in demand due to inclusion in some new EV batteries in place of cobalt.
| Copper | 3.63 | ↓ | -1% |
| Nickel | 8.14 | ↔ | 0% |
| Zinc | 1.23 | ↓ | -5% |
| Iron Ore | 168.8 | ↑ | 0.3% |
| Manganese | 3.8 | ↑ | 16% |
| Coking Coal * | 205 | ↑ | 2% |
* N.B. The coking coal price above is a mid price between the Australian FOB price, and the spot price quoted by the Dalian Commodity Exchange in China.
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Precious Metal ETF’s
As one would expect, all the indexes are down this week, due to the falls in price of gold and silver.
It’s useful to compare an individual company in your portfolio against the performance of the indexes. Please note that the GDX and SIL contain the largest mining companies (Barrick, Newmont etc) so I normally refer to the GDXJ, and SILJ, when making comparisons, as they are a more relevant checkpoint for junior mining companies, even medium to large producers.
| GDX | 34.58 | ↓ | -6% |
| GDXJ | 49.45 | ↓ | -9% |
| Sil | 41.63 | ↓ | -10% |
| SILJ | 15.47 | ↓ | -3% |