China’s unwrought copper imports declined by 7.2% year-on-year to 837,000 metric tons in the first two months of 2025, customs data on Friday showed, due to increased domestic smelting capacity that reduced the need for additional imports.
Deliverable copper stocks on the Shanghai Futures Exchange stood at 268,337 tons on February 28, more than double the 83,174 tons recorded on January 3.
Source – Reuters
On January 7, 2025, A-Mark Precious Metals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMRK) stock closed at $27.50 per share with a market capitalization of $637.563 million.
“As a long-biased fund, we prefer to own various countercyclical companies to lower the risk of our portfolio. At the beginning of the year, we identified a pawn store operator and a wholesaler / retailer of precious metals called A-Mark Precious Metals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMRK) as interesting long-term opportunities that simultaneously provided a hedging function to our portfolio. We have exited our position in AMRK during the year. We believed that economic uncertainty and higher precious metals prices would spark renewed consumer demand for physical gold and silver coins. This demand did not materialize and we therefore saw no immediate catalyst in AMRK.” stated Night Watch Investment Management in its Q4 2024 investor letter
Source – Insider Monkey
The Ministry of Commerce and Industry said in a statement Thursday it revised import figures from April to November after discovering the discrepancy, which had resulted from migrating to a new data transmission system.
The miscalculation led to a four-fold increase in gold imports to a record $14.8 billion in November, causing the trade deficit to widen to $37.8 billion.
Preliminary revisions show gold imports were $37.39 billion in the April-November period, down $11.7 billion from previously reported.
Source – Bloomberg / Live Mint
Silver has initially fallen significantly in the early hours of Tuesday, as the market reacted to the ceasefire, taking out some of the “risk trade.” However, we are holding the range again. Ultimately, there are a lot of “moving pieces” to pay attention to.
Source – FX EMPIRE
Spot gold added 0.4% to $2,755.2 per ounce as of 02:29 p.m. ET (1629 GMT). Prices were at their highest since Oct. 31 when they hit their all-time high of $2,790.15.
“There are uncertainties with proposed tariffs and other things, and gold typically does well when there’s a large or even a moderate amount of uncertainty in the market, it’s a natural place where people gravitate to,” said Ryan McIntyre, senior portfolio manager at Sprott Asset Management
“(Trump) has been perhaps just a shade less hawkish on tariffs as feared, which helps — less/lower tariffs is taken to indicate lower inflation hence potential for more rate cuts,” said Tai Wong, an independent metals trader.
Source – Reuters
Gold touched a more than one-week low on Thursday after a U.S. federal court blocked President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs”, dampening the metal’s safe-haven allure, while a robust dollar further pressured prices of the precious metal.
Spot gold was down 0.5% at $3,273.37 an ounce, as of 0431 GMT, after hitting its lowest since May 20.
But the gold market is still bullish as “longer term outlook suggests a weaker dollar and there’s still likely to be some inflationary pressures near term,” Frappell said.
Spot silver rose 0.6% to $33.19 an ounce, platinum was up 0.6% to $1,080.90 and palladium edged 1.3% higher to $974.69.
Source – Reuters
“Copper is like the second most important thing the Defense Department uses in order to make its weapons systems. And we’re in a situation now where worldwide there’s a glut of copper,” Navarro told Schmitt. “There’s a dumping of copper into our markets. And we’ve lost our ability to both smelt copper, which is taking the ore and getting the raw copper and refine it into the products we need. And it’s a serious thing.”
Source – Independent Journal Review
