Copper is a big, liquid, and essential market. It’s called the PhD of metals for a reason: economic growth requires copper and so demand for the red metal reliably ebbs and flows with the economy.
Click the photo above or the following link to read Copper: A Price Double Hasn’t Created Supply…So What Will It Take?!?
It’s been a few months since I talked uranium. I watch the price and momentum every day, to be sure, but I haven’t commented of late.
Click the image above or the following link to read Uranium: Price Down, Fundamentals Better.
You likely know my overall thesis by now, but after talking through it so many times over the last week, in presentations and conversations, it has refined somewhat. So I will run through it again, using some of the slides I made for these conferences to back up my points.
Click the image below or link to read Survive The Storm.
They did it: the Fed raised interest rates by 50 basis points. If anything, Jerome Powell was a bit dovish in his press conference. He told everyone to expect several more 0.5% raises over the next few meetings, but that larger hikes are not currently part of the plan. That went against market expectations, which had priced in one 75-basis point raise in the coming months.
Click the image above or the link to read Half A Point Later, Still No Clarity.
In the mid-month issue I included Chapter 1. Here’s Chapter 2, which talks about the history and future of world reserve currencies. As you’ll see, the war in Ukraine has acted to accelerate trends already in place, and greatly supports silver as an important hedge.
What did gold do in response to the latest inflation numbers? It soared by $50, from a base of around $1,925 to $1,975 within just 5 trading days. Gold has held $1,900 since mid-February, and $1,920 since mid-March.
I’m actually surprised that the March rate of 8.5% wasn’t higher. In the past year, energy was up 32%, while food was up 8.8%. Over the last 12 months, gasoline is up 48%, transportation 7.7%, electricity 11.1%, used cars 35%, new cars 12.5%, meat/fish/eggs 13.7%, food at home 10%, food away from home 6.9%, clothing 6.8%, and shelter 5%. And yet rents are up 17%, while home prices are up 19%.
Click the image above or the following link to read Gold’s Month In Review.
I answered a host of questions, including when I will add a carbon credit streaming company to the portfolio, how inflation, uncertainty, and risk sentiment impact investment potential across the gold space, and how to build a diversified mining portfolio. There were also two company-specific questions – but those were for subscribers’ eyes only!
Click the image above or the link to read Mega Mailbox: Carbon Streaming, Effects of Inflation, and Diversifying Your Junior Mining Portfolio.
Silver has started behaving well since the start of the year. In the first three months, silver is already up 8.7%. The following chart of the last two months shows that silver began climbing in late January, then peaked in early March.
Top safe haven assets tend to be silver, gold, the U.S. dollar, and U.S. Treasuries. Secondary ones may also be highly liquid and widely used currencies like the euro, the Swiss Franc and the Japanese Yen.
What I find interesting is that silver started to climb a full three weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine. It’s as though precious metals were already sensing the impending military crisis, with Russian troops gathering en masse along the Ukrainian border. Silver then reversed, but not much.
For years now the Fed has worked to communicate clearly and signal its intentions ahead so as to never take the market by surprise.
Yet despite all those efforts, somehow there are still key pieces of information that are not communicated.
Today is a prime example. After the Fed’s last meeting in mid-March, the statement communicated a 25-basis point raise and a more aggressive rate-hiking outlook from all members. In the press conference following, Fed chair Powell said the committee had discussed balance sheet reduction but not made any firm decisions.
Click the image above or on the link to read A Silly And Unsurprising FED Suprise.
The uranium spot price gained 20% in March to close today at US$58 per lb. U3O8. There are several reasons why it gained so – and why I think the gains will continue.
Click the image above to read Uranium In An Ex-Russia World.
