This past few weeks has seen a nice rally in gold and other precious metals. Unfortunately it takes a crisis or a war to get gold to become that safe haven it's known for. However this time around we see all commodities across the board on the rise. Metals, energy, agriculture, you name it, it's heading up and a lot of this is due to inflation and excess money printing. I heard some financial analyst say real true inflation could hit 25% by next year.
Palladium has hit record highs of $3000+ per oz and copper is setting new highs also. Nickel has gone through the roof. Gold is seeing new highs which will be great for the placer miners however with the price of oil way back over $100 per barrel I can guarantee there won't be many bargains on fuel this summer. Fuel is one of the biggest expenses for miners these days and if your mining in Canada there is those new carbon taxes added to that fuel bill.
With higher oil prices though and the governments agenda for going green, lithium stocks should do well. Be careful of any resource plays in Chile at this time however because of the new government that is looking at nationalizing copper mining operations. This type of nonsense can spill over to all types of mining. So if your looking into South American lithium plays, maybe best stick with Argentina or Peru at the moment or even look into some of the juniors who are exploring in Nevada.
Speaking going green, one of the most used metals in the green agenda is silver and for the life of me I can't figure out why it is still priced the way it is. There are tons of ideas and theories about comex manipulation and naked paper shorts out there. I did read an article however that mentioned there are big buyers of bulk silver like Apple or Samsung that can't afford to have the price of silver to rally and these companies do their part in the suppression along with trading houses and banks. I was reading that First Majestic Silver was only selling as much silver as was required to keep operations going and stock piling the rest. If more miners did this instead of worrying about quarterly profits, I believe silver would become the item of luxury. One day all this nonsense may unravel but until then I think silver will be sub $30 USD.
With gold prices hitting new highs money is slowly starting to move over the miners. Last month Barrick said they will start buying back one billion dollars US dollars worth of their own stock back. Looking at the chart below you can tell it was well received. By the way, Barrick pays a dividend.
Good news for the Yukon. Newmont Mining got the go ahead for it's Coffee project that it got from when it took over Goldcorp. Goldcorp bought out the Kaminak Coffee gold project a few years back. The project is located about 130 KM south of Dawson City Yukon. The project consists of four open-pit gold mines as well as one permanent waste rock storage facility. With a mine life of ten years, the project is expected to have a 30 month construction period, during which up to 700 people will be employed.
Also in the Yukon, Western Copper's Casino project has gotten the green light to start building access roads. The Casino project mine could very well end up being one of the largest copper projects in the world.
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