“With the price now reaching our long-held target of $3,000/oz, the main question is whether the rally will continue. We think so, as long as policy risks and an intensifying trade conflict continue to spur safe-haven demand,” UBS said.
Source – Seeking Alpha
UBS Group AG – formerly Union Bank of Switzerland, is a multinational investment bank and financial services company based in Switzerland.
AngloGold Ashanti (AU.N), is boosting payouts to investors, it said on Wednesday, after its profit surged to $954 million last year from a loss of $46 million in the prior year, buoyed by the precious metal’s rally to record highs.
Shares in the company however fell as much as 7.4% in early trading in New York.
CEO Alberto Calderon said the gold price rally had given AngloGold the strongest balance sheet position in more than a decade, and it is “able to pass on those benefits to shareholders in a more generous dividend policy”.
Source – Reuters
Freeport’s last export permit expired at the end of 2024, but the company has requested it can continue selling copper concentrate abroad because its local copper smelter was in repair after a fire in October last year.
“The trade ministry supports a plan to relax the export policy after weighing the cost and benefit analysis … while also observing the sustainability of the government’s natural resource downstreaming policy,” deputy minister Dyah Roro Esti said in a statement.
Freeport Indonesia said that it’s currently negotiating with the government over the export permit and believed the government “would accommodate” it.
Source – Mining.com
“Until we see clarity on the US policies, both trade-related and economic, it will create an environment for increased levels of gold volatility,” said Joseph Cavatoni, senior market strategist for North America at industry lobby the World Gold Council. “So, while we might see a $3,000 gold price, we expect there could be ongoing movements that bring us back below.”
Spot gold was down 0.1% at $2,905.73 an ounce at 10:28 a.m. in London, after rising to as high as $2,942.68. Silver, platinum and palladium were all lower. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was steady after climbing on Monday.
Source – Bloomberg
The U.S. will soon be flooded with massive amounts of copper shipments in a global rush to front-run President Trump’s probable tariffs, with 100K-150K metric tons of refined copper expected to arrive in U.S. ports in the coming weeks, which potentially would surpass the all-time record of 136,951 tons set in January 2022, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.
Goldman Sachs analysts said they expect all forms of copper shipped to the U.S. to be hit with tariffs by year-end, keeping Comex prices at a hefty premium over other benchmarks, and noted that tariffs could cause China to refine 10K-20K tons/month less copper within the first three months – in a global market that Goldman already expected to face a 180K-ton deficit this year.
Source – Seeking Alpha
A collapse at a copper mine in Chile killed one worker and left five trapped underground, authorities said on Friday, forcing Chile’s state mining company to suspend operations in the affected area of the world’s largest underground copper deposit.
Nine other mine workers suffered injuries, said Chile’s National Copper Corporation, known as Codelco, describing the incident as the result of “a seismic event.”
The U.S. Geological Survey reported a magnitude 5 earthquake in an area of central Chile where Codelco’s El Teniente mine is located, at 5:34 p.m. local time on Thursday. Authorities said they’re still investigating whether it was a naturally occurring earthquake or whether mining activity at El Teniente caused the quake.
“We are making every effort to try to rescue these five miners,” said Andrés Music, general manager of El Teniente. “The next 48 hours are crucial.”
Source – The Associated Press
Praying for these people to be rescued. -Victoria
