Golds weaken — a little

Stock markets south of the border moved sideways during the reporting period Dec. 13-19, despite generally positive economic news and a signal from the Federal Reserve Bank that it had finished with interest rate increases. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 10,836.53, up 68.76 points or 0.6% from the previous Monday.

The markets didn’t seem to be picking up on signals from the gold market, either. Bullion prices — perhaps frothy at the US$536 level at the beginning of the period — fell back sharply, with the London afternoon fix on Dec. 19 down to US$508.75 per oz. Yet the major gold equities weren’t badly hurt by the downturn in the price — Newmont Mining was down a quarter at US$50.15, AngloGold Ashanti gave back US31 to close at US$46.62, Gold Fields fell US8 to US$16.84, and Harmony Gold Mining dropped US28 to US$12.93.

There were two big casualties among the mid-tiers: Minas Buenaventura plunged US$3.87 to US$27.35 and Lihir Gold was off US$2.83 at US$30.64. Silver-sensitive Hecla Mining was down US22 at US$3.55, while Coeur d’Alene Mines slid US28 to US$3.92.

Amex-listed Apex Silver got the double whammy of a falling silver price and the victory of left-wing Evo Morales in the Bolivian presidential elections. Apex shares dipped US$1.04 to US$16.18.

Rio Tinto was the successful bidder in a government auction of the La Granja copper project in northern Peru, a project that both Cambior and BHP Billiton had taken swings at. La Granja, with a reported resource of 1.2 billion tonnes grading 0.65% copper, went for US$22 million down and a US$60-million work commitment, with Rio as the only bidder among six pre-qualified companies. Rio shares were up US45 at US$176.05.

Print

Be the first to comment on "Golds weaken — a little"

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published.


*


By continuing to browse you agree to our use of cookies. To learn more, click more information

Dear user, please be aware that we use cookies to help users navigate our website content and to help us understand how we can improve the user experience. If you have ideas for how we can improve our services, we’d love to hear from you. Click here to email us. By continuing to browse you agree to our use of cookies. Please see our Privacy & Cookie Usage Policy to learn more.

Close