On Wednesday, ahead of the North American equity market open, Barrick Gold (NYSE: GOLD, TSX: ABX) reported a 69% increase in net earnings to $2.14 billion and a 51% rise in adjusted net earnings to $2.21 billion, significantly beating analyst expectations. The company also noted that its annual operating cash flow in 2024 increased by 20% to $4.49 billion, while free cash flow more than doubled to $1.32 billion.
Source – KITCO News
Citi anticipates an eventual implementation of a 25% copper-specific tariff by the fourth quarter of 2025, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order initiating an investigation into U.S. copper imports, the bank said in a note on Wednesday.
Source – Reuters
All existing slots at the Bank of England to withdraw gold bars are booked up as market players race to ship the metal to the United States to take advantage of a surge in gold prices there, an official has said.
“The US gold market has been trading at a premium to the London market,” Dave Ramsden, deputy governor for markets and banking at the central bank, told reporters Thursday. The owners of the gold bars in its underground vaults have been “looking to take advantage of that price differential,” he added.
Meanwhile, gold inventories on the US COMEX exchange — a major market for trading gold, silver and other metals — have almost doubled since the end of October, Commerzbank said in a note Friday.
“The fact that gold is significantly more expensive on the COMEX than (in) other trading centers is likely related to the feared US import tariffs, which could possibly also affect gold,” wrote Carsten Fritsch, a commodity analyst at the German bank. “The deliveries on the COMEX are therefore likely to be primarily driven by concerns about possible supply disruptions.”
Source – CNN
COMEX – Commodity Exchange
The Canadian mining company on Wednesday set a 2025 production target of between 520,000 and 580,000 metric tons of copper at its Kamoa-Kakula operation.
Ivanhoe expects to produce between 180,000 and 240,000 tons of zinc at its Kipushi zinc-copper-germanium-silver mine.
Ivanhoe said that during the last day of the year, a record 750 tons of zinc were produced over a 24-hour period, exceeding the operation’s nameplate capacity.
Source – Market Watch
“Any country with gold reserves should be holding at least 11% of that amount in bitcoin reserves,” Armstrong posted to X in response to criticism of Trump’s plan for a national bitcoin reserve. “And I believe in the next five to 10 years bitcoin’s market cap will likely surpass gold. So these reserves should grow to exceed gold.”
“We’re gonna do something great with crypto because we don’t want China, or anybody else … but others are embracing it, and we want to be ahead,” Trump told CNBC.
Source – Forbes
The stock climbed 12% on Friday, its steepest one-day gain in nearly two months, outperforming the benchmark Kospi index’s 0.85% rise.
The extraordinary shareholders’ meeting had initially been called by private-equity firm MBK Partners and Korea Zinc’s major shareholder Young Poong, which have teamed up and increased their combined stake to more than 40% since September for control of the smelter, to reshape its board and management led by Chairman Yun B. Choi.
Source – The Wall Street Journal
Many people know gold does well when the economy is turbulent—but gold performed in 2024 for additional “nonfinancial, geopolitical” reasons.
Source – The Jerusalem Post reported/written by Augusta Precious Metals
Gold imports to Switzerland from the United States jumped to the highest monthly level since at least 2012 in April after the exclusion of precious metals from U.S. import tariffs, Swiss customs data showed on Tuesday.
The Swiss data showed that gold imports from the U.S. rose to 63.0 metric tons in April from 25.5 tons in March. It was the highest in monthly data going back to early 2012.
Switzerland’s total gold exports fell by 31% month on month in April with gold deliveries to the U.S. dropping to 12.7 tons from 103.3 tons in March.
Source – Reuters
