Oh My Uranium
From The Maven Letter: 17 January 2024
I don’t mean to inundate you with uranium updates…but it would be inappropriate not to discuss the metal that jumped 13% in the last week. I added that jump in green on the chart below because it’s very hard to get a uranium price chart with the most recent week’s data.
It’s important to remind that there is almost no speculative action in the uranium spot price. Several mainstream metals have futures markets and leverage options and the like, all of which create speculative pressure on the price (in whichever direction).
Uranium has none of that. Yellowcake is traded by appointment – literally. All of the buyers and sellers know each other and each deal is negotiated between two parties. The parties then report their deal terms to the two groups that calculate the spot price (UxC and Trade Tech). So the spot price simply represents the price at which transactions are taking place.
Why did the spot price jump so much in the last week? Because Kazakhstan, which produces 40 to 45% of the world’s uranium, admitted that it will not produce as many pounds as it guided this year and probably won’t
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