Good afternoon
amazing, how the US-market and the US$ are holding up during this political turmoil in Washington! Nero seems to prepare an assault on Mueller...disgraceful, and if the US is still a democracy with independant institutions, I hope his Republican mates will prevent this to happen. ( well, I wrote this, before the US opened...does not look so good right now!)
In the meantime, Putin got re-elected - well, looks like the voting process has been sort of an election - but even Western commentators seem to agree, that the majority of Russian people want Putin to run the show.
Cobalt is trading above 40$ ...new high...as some German think-tank is warning, that a shortage of it might limit the penetration of EV´s at some stage.
It looks like the UK and the EU have agreed on a transition deal...Sterling is very strong today
Zuckerberg does not seem to handle his data well - tech under pressure in the States, which is exaggerating market falls. They are under pressure anyway from the political side - this is the last thing we need! Base metals also a little weaker, while gold is looking better.
Australian gold stocks had a pretty good day - I have to admit, that I am surprised about the ongoing strength, given the lacklustre- to weaker gold price more recently, which is rather disappointing, giving the massive, political disruptions around the world. Australian stocks continue their massive outperformance vs North American gold miners - I guess a disappointing Newcrest is helping here, as some investors might be switching out of the market leader.
Beadell - will merge with a Canadia shell company to get a Canadian listing, and is doing a small placement, which gives Sprott and some Lundin-backed entities a cheap entry via a placement. Well - we will find out, whether the placement has been cheap...as you know, I stopped being a fan of Beadell years ago...
Finders - unfortunately, defeat is looming! The Indonesian institutions will most probably end up being succesfull with their cheeky bid for the company. The market is just to cautious on Indonesia, as many investors have been ripped of there before. About 60% of the stock is now controlled by the Indonesians - I am too scared to be left behind and will accept the takeover at 23ct as well, ending a journey , which lasted many years! The risk of being a minority holder here is just too high. Pity - the bid is way too cheap...
Gascoyne - updated the market today on progress and said, that so-called wet comissioning would be taking place within 2 month. De-risking is accellerating, and that´s showing up in the share price, which made a new recent high with very strong turnover.
Newcrest - quite interesting....they announced the feasibility study for Wafi, their massive gold/copper development in JV with Goldfields, in PNG. 2.8 bill$ initial capital for the production of 161.000t of copper + 265.000oz og gold p.a.. Not surprisingly, the IRR is only 18% - for a ming project in PNG, that is very low, in my opinion. The pay-back is a staggering 9.5 years at copper price of 3$/lb! And the tailings are going to be dumped into the sea...That does not sound like 2018 to me...it won´t be easy to get approval for this ( and perhaps they should not get approval??? I know too little about it, but it sounds rather irresponsible to me...). From the day of approval, the project will need nearly 6 years to be up and running. I am not 100% sure about this, but I think Wafi has been discovered early this century - another mine, which will take 20 years or so from discovery to ( potential ) production. Financing of the project is also not clear at this stage - a lot of money for Newcrest, but even more for JV-partner Goldfields. The feasibility study is not a reason to buy Newcrest - the company will remain under pressure, I think.
Have a nice evening
WS