Total assets under management (AUMs) in gold-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) hit record highs of $271 billion in 2024, according to the World Gold Council (WGC).
This represented a 26% year-on-year increase and was driven by a soaring bullion price.
The yellow metal hit new all-time highs on 40 occasions last year, the WGC noted. Over the whole year, gold appreciated 26% in value to around $2,629 per ounce.
Source – Forbes
The R.M.S. Republic sank Jan. 24, 1909, after a collision in dense fog with the S.S. Florida off the coast of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts.
The Lords of Fortune company has identified two cargoes — a $25 million Tsarist gold shipment and an $800,000 U.S. Navy shipment, both 1909 face values when gold was $20.67 per ounce.
With a successful recovery, an $8 million investment should return $200 million conservatively, according to Capt. Martin Bayerle of Lords of Fortune LLC.
Add the Russian gold, 45 tons of United States gold $10 eagles on melt value alone, and you exceed 100 times, he said.
Source – Coin World
This is amazing! Wondering if there’s as much as they say there is. Hopefully there isn’t too much damage to the gold from the salt water. Can’t wait to see pictures or video of the excavation. -V.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said the White House was “very busy” crafting its trade policy as the clock ticks down on his self-imposed August 1 deadline. At that point, America could fundamentally reshape the way it does business around the world.
Trump signed executive actions on Wednesday imposing a 50% tariff on Brazil, a 50% tariff on certain copper products and suspending a tax perk for all countries that allowed cheap packages to fly into the US duty-free.
Trump said the agreement, if completed, would include developing Pakistan’s oil reserves with a yet-to-be-named oil company.
Source – CNN
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
Freeport McMoRan (NYSE:FCX) trades little changed Thursday as Jefferies upgrades shares to Buy from Hold with a $48 price target, raised from $40, just one month after downgrading due to risks in Indonesia, a cautious view on copper, and the company’s near-term lack of free cash flow.
If tariffs are implemented, Comex copper price premiums to the LME, which have been high already because of potential tariffs, likely will rise further, Jefferies analyst Christopher LaFemina says, noting Freeport (FCX) sells 1.35B lbs/year of copper at Comex prices and the current Comex premium to LME is ~$0.30/lb, and tariff-impacted imports would effectively set the Comex price since the U.S. cannot be self-sufficient in copper.
Source – Seeking Alpha
Jefferies – Jefferies Financial Group Inc. is an American multinational independent investment bank and financial services company headquartered in New York City.
Copper’s rise is being driven “solely by supply concerns surrounding the potential for universal tariffs to be placed on all imports of copper into the U.S.,” said Natalie Scott-Gray, a senior metals demand analyst at StoneX. The U.S. is “heavily reliant on foreign copper, with imports accounting for [around] 45% of demand.”
Copper prices have climbed more than 23% in 2025 through Monday, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Source – Market Watch
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
