Good afternoon
Trump is becoming even wilder in his tweets - is he under pressure, and more so, than we believe??
He is also chatting about eliminating China from US-financial markets…the next step of escalation in the trade war.
China´s Manufacturing PMI is still slightly negative, but better than expected, while the Dallas Fed Manufacturing Outlook has been positive. Equities are quite strong today - metals generally strong ( nickel, lead and zinc up by about 2%, while copper a liitle weaker ).
Gold has been relatively weak today - the US$ has been strong, and equities are strong. Gold has not had a decent corection, since it started running a few month ago - so perhaps this is happening now. But holdings of Gold ETF´s continue to rise strongly, and are close to an alltime high, indicating much more investor interest. And as we all know, there is ample reason to buy gold, from politics in the US, to geopolitical instabilities, a possible recession in many countries, ultral-low interest rates and continued record budget deficits in the States. As I am finishing, gold has broken support at 1480 and is tarding at 1476 US$/oz!
There has been a real lack of fresh info on the mircroside recently. Companies have been pre-occupied with the ened to publich their Annual Reports - a myriad of them being done in the last few days. And for mining and exploration companies, the Quarter is just finished - so Quarterly Reports will come out soon. usually, companies save some fresh info for their Quarterlies, unless it´s so significant, that it has to be published immediately.
But one theme has been interesting over the last few days/weeks: Exploration stocks are getting a real hearing! Companies like CARAWINE, CHALICE, LEFROY, DEVEX to mention a few, have been very active. Interest is focussing on potentially large scale exploration progress in areas surrounding some big, existing resources - like in Victoria, where Kirkland have had their amazing success, surrounding Cadia in New South Wales, or in the case of Lefroy, next to Goldfields big disovery in Western Australia. Some companies have seen spectacular rises in valuation, like STAVELY MINERALS, which jumped 600% from recent lows to a market cap of 180 Mill A$ ( the market had given little attention so far to some steady progress, but got really excited about a recent drill hole containing 32m with nearly 6% copper, 52g silver and 1 g gold/t ), and ALKANE, which doubled to 370 Mill A$ market cap ( based on a drill hole of 500m containing 0,48g gold and 0,2% copper , indicating a phorphyry-stile deposit ).
I think it´s time to put a foot in the door here…but whatever you do: Do not buy those ( generally ) which have already put of a few hundred%, and not only one stock….and watch out for those, which have raised funds recently and are cashed up for drilling!
Have a nice evening
WS