Member Info for JungleBabbler

Err.... 18 is pretty much 3 times 6.32 so just what does mean?

This is all far too quiet...........

No. The results will NOT be out tomorrow. We will get an RNS telling us which date they will be out and details of any inestors conference call etc.

Q1 was pre announced on 10th April with results out on 14th.

This isn't difficult - just look/read at the RNSs already out there.

Bamps firstly thanks for the Q2 Results post - its useful.

Q1's results were pre-announced on the 10th April with the results as you know published on the 14th - which is as it should be. So this is what I'd expect for Q2 i.e. everyone knows what is expected at the same time.

TimberTrader stated that it was a "respected investor" who said it was the 28th. I did ask TT twice who it was and why they were identified as a "respected investor" rather than a "respected poster". Not knowing anything about TT I don't know what to make of it.

Anyway for what ever reason TT didn't reply to my question before he departed so I'm (or rather we're) none the wiser.

Where does the US get its copper?

This info is from a Reuters article - July 9th, it is mainly graphs which don't have an associated table of numbers so all figures are approximated.

BEIJING, July 8 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he planned to announce a 50% tariff on copper imports later in the day, surprising a global industry whose output is critical to electric vehicles, military hardware, semiconductors and a wide range of consumer goods. Trump in February had ordered a probe into possible copper tariffs, with a November deadline, as part of efforts to rebuild U.S. production of the metal.

It was unclear whether the investigation - which was intended to evaluate imports of raw mined copper, copper concentrates, copper alloy, scrap copper and derivative products - has now concluded.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Tuesday the duties would likely be put in place by the end of July or August 1.

Here is what you need to know about U.S. copper imports:

US IMPORTS

The United States produces domestically just over half the refined copper it consumes each year. More than two-thirds of that is mined in Arizona, where the development of a massive new mine has been stalled for more than a decade. The remaining refined copper, just shy of 1 million metric tons annually, is imported.

While the White House framed the new tariffs as a way to counter China's dominance of the global market, the United States in fact imports most of its refined copper from the Americas.

Chile, Canada and Peru accounted for more than 90% of refined copper imports last year, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

Chile 620 kt

Canada 160 kt

Peru 70 kt

DRC 50 kt

Mexico 20 kt

GLOBAL PRODUCTION

China dominates global copper refining, but most of the ore that feeds into its smelters is mined elsewhere, in particular in Latin America. Chile and Peru together mined roughly a third of global copper last year, according to the USGS.

Chile 5200 kt

DRC 3200 kt

Peru 2600 kt

China 1800 kt

USA 1100 kt

Indonesia 1100 kt

Russia 900 kt

Australia 800 kt

Kazakhstan 750 kt

However, China is expanding its control over world copper mining through its major investments in mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The DRC is now the world's second-largest copper miner after overtaking Peru, due in large part to massive Chinese investment in the African country's mining sector

CHINA DOMINATES COPPER REFINING ALTHOUGH MOST OF THE ORE IS MINED ELSEWHERE

China 12000 kt

DRC 2300 kt

Chile 1900 kt

Japan 1700 kt

Russia 1000 kt

USA 1000 kt

Germany 800 kt

South Korea 800 kt

Poland 800 kt

The Chinese copper smelting sector dwarfs all others. The country had dozens of copper smelters operating last year. Meanwhile, the United States has only two primary copper smelters, according to the USGS.

MINING COMPANIES

Another factor that is showing the positive story for gold is the performance of gold mining equities.

Major gold producers have seen their share prices rise at a far faster pace than the actual metal.

There are several reasons why this could be the case, including the expectation that shareholders will receive higher dividend payouts in the future and that companies are being rewarded for showing capital discipline in prior years.

But it also may be that investors are starting to re-rate gold mining companies in the expectation that gold becomes a more vital and larger part of portfolios, both public and private.

For example, shares in Newmont (NEM.N)

, opens new tab, the world's largest listed gold miner, have risen 63% from their most recent low on December 30 to close at $60.06 on Wednesday.

Canada's Barrick Mining (ABX.TO)

, opens new tab has seen its shares gain 40.6% in U.S. dollar terms from its recent low on December 19 to the close on Wednesday.

Anglogold Ashanti (AU.N)

, opens new tab shares in New York have surged 108% from the low on December 30 to the close of $46.66 on Wednesday, while Gold Fields (GFIJ.J)

, opens new tab has seen a gain of 88% in U.S. dollar terms from its November 14 low to the close on Wednesday.

If gold does become a more central part of investment strategies, the listed miners are likely to become more attractive, given the difficulty of finding and developing new projects and the long time between exploration and production.

LAUNCESTON, Australia, July 3 (Reuters) - Is gold the next metal to be added to the list of "critical minerals"?

Gold is not a vital component of advanced manufacturing like other critical minerals such as rare earths, lithium and copper.

But the precious metal appears to be undergoing a subtle shift in how it is viewed by governments and investors.

Since countries moved away from the gold standard by the early 1970s, gold has largely been viewed as a relatively niche part of investment portfolios and government reserves.

Gold was something that was added to portfolios as an inflation hedge or during times of heightened geopolitical tensions.

In some ways, the role of gold in both central bank and investment portfolios was overtaken by bonds, with U.S. Treasuries becoming the most important of these assets.

But the return of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency is leading to a global reassessment of the relative safety of U.S. assets, the independence of the Federal Reserve and the likely worsening of the U.S. fiscal position.

Add in Trump's attacks on the rule of law in the United States and the likely hit to both the U.S. and global economies from his trade policies, and the stage is set for a reevaluation of the role of gold.

The precious metal has gained 32.3% from a low of $2,536.71 an ounce hit on November 14 in the days after Trump's victory over his Democratic Party rival, former Vice President Kamala Harris.

It reached a record high of $3,500.05 an ounce on April 22, and has since retreated slightly to close at $3,357.08 on Wednesday.

While gold's day-to-day moves are still largely driven by the news cycle, the overall backdrop looks supportive.

The World Gold Council released a report last month in which it surveyed 73 central banks, and 95% of them expected the official sector to increase holdings in the coming 12 months.

"This is a record high since it was first tracked in the 2019 survey and represents a 17% increase from the 2024 findings," the council said.

Central banks are also moving to repatriate more of their holdings back to their home countries and away from the United States, a further sign that there is a loss of confidence in U.S. assets and the policies of the Trump administration.

Gold is also well-placed as one of the few viable alternatives if more governments, fund managers and private investors outside the United States form the view that the era of U.S. exceptionalism is over and that U.S. Treasuries are now a riskier asset as the country's fiscal position deteriorates.

Bamps the reason we don't see and report these Crazies is because many of us have Green-binned them; all we see is the fools responding to them.

Take Care

JB

Looking for a colorful Americanism to describe how you've just been deceived out of all your money? Say you've been hornswoggled!

So it's literal meaning is to deceive or cheat someone.

Hi TimberTrader I asked this question last night but I guess you missed it.

I suspect you may very well be right that the Annuals will drop at the same time as Q2s figures.

I'm intrigued who this respected investor is? And how is this different from a respected poster.....

JB

Hi TimberTrader, I suspect you may very well be right that the Annuals will drop at the same time as Q2s figures. I'm intrigued who this respected investor is? And how is this different from a respected poster.....

JB

Expanded Havieron ?

What does that mean?

Team Bamps?

anyone?

As asset managers become more passive, specialised or tied up by mandates, it is the firms they invest in that keep the market ticking. So thank your nearest chief financial officer.

Q. Did you spot the 2 (or 3) take-aways for Greatlanders ??????

What explains this prowess? Part of the answer lies in firms’ access to private information. Few are better placed to forecast a company’s future cashflows than insiders. When a company begins buying back its own shares—or employees convert their options into stockholdings—investors should pay attention.

But informational advantages go only so far. They do not explain why firm-level issuance predicts aggregate stockmarket returns. And firms’ decisions are publicly disclosed: if they were merely signals of private insight, copycat investors quickly ought to arbitrage away any return. Instead, the success of companies may reflect not just what they know, but what they are able to do. They are unusually well placed to act on mispricings.

Start with short-selling. Firms have a natural way to take a contrarian view: when they believe their shares are overpriced, they can issue more of them. For a hedge fund to express a similar view, it must sell short the stock or purchase more complex products, such as put options. These strategies are not only expensive, requiring the payment of borrowing fees or option premiums, but also expose the investor to large losses and margin calls if the stock price rises. Risks become particularly acute during bouts of volatility, such as in January 2021, when retail investors sent GameStop’s share price to astonishing heights. Hedge funds hesitated to short-sell for fear of making losses as investors piled in. GameStop’s boss, by contrast, simply issued new shares.

Companies also operate across markets. Almost every business finances itself with some combination of debt and equity. If one becomes unusually expensive, it can easily switch to the other. Yueran Ma of the University of Chicago finds that firms routinely move towards whichever market looks cheap. Such flexibility is rarely available to institutional investors, which are constrained by benchmarks and mandates. Only 28 of Vanguard’s 267 funds can trade both bonds and stocks, for instance.

Last, businesses benefit from insulation. They may face unhappy shareholders, but they do not face redemptions. When institutional investors mess up, their own investors pull out, forcing them to sell at just the wrong time.

Firm hand

The agility this engenders makes companies valuable providers of liquidity, too. As passive investing has grown to make up a fifth of the market, so has demand for stocks in the big indices. Who meets that demand, helping anchor prices? Marco Sammon of Harvard and John Shim of the University of Notre Dame suggest it is, once again, companies. Intermediaries such as active managers and pension funds buy alongside their passive peers. Firms step in to take the other side of the trade by issuing new shares. Similarly, when governments flood the market with short-term debt, firms respond by issuing longer-dated bonds.

...cont'd

Article from The Economist June 19th.

The answer is not hedge funds or quant shops or short-sellers.

If finance has a single rule, it is that arbitrage should keep prices in line. If they do stray from fundamentals, so the argument goes, savvy investors should step in to correct them.

All good in theory. In practice, less so. Markets can be swept by sentiment, detaching valuations from fundamentals. Economists have surgically documented persistent distortions. Purely mechanical flows, for instance, move markets even when they are known to investors in advance and unrelated to earnings prospects. When a stock is added to an index, its price inflates. Predictable dividend reinvestments also push up prices. Why does this happen? And who, in time, might correct the market?

Ask on Wall Street for the identity of such arbitrageurs, and you get the usual suspects. Hedge funds and quant shops, armed with analysts and algorithms, are the most natural candidates. The industry has ballooned from overseeing $1.4trn to $4.5trn in assets over the past decade, and is well positioned to spot mispricings. Others suggest short-sellers, ever alert to signs of froth, or retail investors, now keen dip-buyers. One candidate gets mentioned rather less often: staid corporates.

Such businesses are normally seen as passive capital-raisers, not active market participants and certainly not market disciplinarians. Even though they can act on perceived mispricings, firms typically focus more on expanding their own business than on searching for alpha. Bosses have operational backgrounds. They are more fluent in capital spending than capital markets. And when financial officers do wade into the market—to issue or buy back shares, for example—valuation is just one of many considerations, alongside avoiding taxes, ensuring a healthy credit rating and making sure the firm does not take on too much leverage.

And yet a growing body of work suggests that corporations, far from being passive observers, are some of the market’s most effective arbitrageurs. In 2000 Malcolm Baker of Harvard University and Jeffrey Wurgler, then of Yale University, found a tight connection between firms’ net equity issuance and subsequent stockmarket returns. Years in which companies issued relatively more stock were typically followed by weaker market performance. More tellingly, companies seemed to issue precisely when valuations were rich, and especially when other frothy signals, such as buoyant consumer sentiment, were drawing attention.

Timing the market is impressive; out-trading the professionals is even more so. Yet firms that issue or retire their own shares routinely do exactly that. In 2022 David McLean of Georgetown University and co-authors showed that corporate-share sales and buy-backs forecast future returns more accurately than the trades of banks, hedge funds, mutual funds and wealth managers.

What explains this prowess? .............cont'd

This adds a positive backdrop to gold as investors are likely to seek alternatives to U.S. Treasuries and other assets, with both investor and central bank buying expected to remain strong.

PRICE ASSUMPTIONS

If a more optimistic price is assumed for gold in 2026-27 of $4,000 an ounce, it would yield export revenue of A$61.6 billion, using the current Australian dollar exchange rate to the U.S. currency.

That would still be below the government's forecast of a combined A$67 billion for both coal types, but unlike gold the price forecasts for coal may be too optimistic given the likely dynamics in the seaborne market.

The government forecast expects metallurgical coal to average $201 a ton in 2026-27 and Newcastle Port benchmark thermal coal $110.

Metallurgical coal contracts on the Singapore Exchange ended at $178.50 a ton on June 27, while globalCOAL assessed Newcastle thermal coal at $108.87 in the week to June 27, with both prices being close to recent four-year lows.

This means that the government is expecting the prices of both types of coal to increase slightly in coming years, which would require seaborne demand in major Asian markets such as China, India, Japan and South Korea to at least hold steady, if not improve.

China and India, the two largest coal producers and importers, are seeking to boost domestic output and lower imports, which may limit their seaborne imports.

Japan and South Korea are seeking to use cleaner fuels such as liquefied natural gas, which may also end up being cost competitive with coal given the flood of new capacity expected to hit the market by 2027.

If gold maintains its current uptrend and seaborne coal continues to come under pressure, then it is quite possible that gold overtakes coal as Australia's second-biggest commodity export by 2026-27.

Enjoying this column? Check out Reuters Open Interest (ROI), your essential new source for global financial commentary. ROI delivers thought-provoking, data-driven analysis of everything from swap rates to soybeans. Markets are moving faster than ever. ROI can help you keep up.

LAUNCESTON, Australia, June 30 (Reuters) - For decades, coal was the bedrock of Australia's commodity exports before it lost its top status to iron ore as shipments of the steel raw material to China soared.

Now coal is at risk of being surpassed by gold.

The latest quarterly report from the Australian government's commodity forecaster shows that earnings from exports of the precious metal are expected to rise to A$56 billion ($36.6 billion) in the fiscal year starting July 1.

This is higher than the A$39 billion forecast for metallurgical coal and the A$28 billion for thermal coal, according to data released on Monday by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources.

Of course, putting the two types of coal together brings a combined total of A$67 billion for expected export earnings in 2025-26, which is still higher than the forecast for gold.

But here is where it gets interesting.

By the 2026-27 fiscal year, it's quite possible that gold could overtake the combined total for metallurgical coal, used to make steel, and thermal coal, used mainly for power generation.

The government expects gold exports to rise to 313 metric tons in 2026-27 from 289 tons in 2025-26 and 250 tons in 2024-25.

This would cement Australia's status as the world's biggest net exporter of gold and the third-largest producer.

However, the department has been cautious in its price forecast for gold, expecting it to retreat to $2,825 an ounce for 2026-27, down from $3,200 for 2025-26, which is in turn below the current spot price of around $3,273.

The government forecaster is traditionally conservative in its price forecasts for commodities and an average of $2,825 for 2026-27 would be at the bottom end of the range expected by most analysts.

It's possible that gold will continue its 29% rally since the November election of Donald Trump to a second term as U.S. president, which has seen a range of policies implemented and planned that are viewed as bullish for the precious metal.

These include tax and spending policies that would dramatically increase the government fiscal deficit, putting pressure on U.S. Treasuries as a store of value.

The sweeping tax cut and spending bill proposed is edging closer to being passed by the Republican-controlled Senate and House of Representatives, and if successfully signed into law it is estimated by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office that it would add $3.3 trillion to U.S. debt over a decade.

There is also considerable uncertainty over Trump's trade and tariff policies, with his early July deadline looming for the United States to reach deals with dozens of major trading partners.

Even if deals are reached and they impose lower tariffs than Trump announced in April, it is still likely that imports into the United States will face far higher taxes than they did under former President Joe Biden and during Trump's first term.

This adds a positive backdrop to gold as investors are likely to seek alternatives t

6.3m shared traded yesterday is 120m in old money is it not?

Yes it was 4p a while back, but my question is ..........q. Will it get back to 4p by the end of the year?

Quite so Dip. I had another share which was on the main mkt in the UK and got itself cross-listed in NY as the business was in the USofA.

I recall there were discrepancies between the 2 mkts for the first week or so as the first mkt chased the 2nd one up and/or the 2nd mkt followed the first down. It was a fruitless activity to try and understand what was what for the that first week.