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1. Gold has traded between $1,276 and $1,297 so far today…as of 7:00 am Pacific, bullion has backed off $16 an ounce at $1,278 in a healthy minor correction after a very strong U.S. jobs report this morning…indicating investor appetite for Gold, holdings of SPDR Gold Trust, the world’s largest Gold-backed exchange-traded fund, rose to 795.31 tonnes this week, their highest since early August…Silver has slipped 12 cents to $15.59…base metals have firmed up with Copper, Nickel and Zinc each posting modest gains at $2.65, $4.94 and $1.13, respectively…Crude Oil has surged $1.64 a barrel to $48.73…OPEC cut Crude output in December, a Reuters‘ survey showed, while the American Petroleum Institute reported a drop in U.S. Crude inventories…the U.S. Dollar Index has gained one-third of a point to 96.59 but will likely retreat from that key resistance area…Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell pledged this morning that the central bank will be watching how the economy performs this year and will adjust policy should growth slow unexpectedly, words that will comfort Wall Street…Powell along with his immediate predecessors, Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke, spoke this morning at the American Economic Association’s annual meeting in Atlanta…
2. Brazil on getting back on track, a country resource investors should start looking at again for opportunities in 2019…Jair Bolsonaro announced the country’s “liberation from socialism, inverted values, the bloated state and political correctness” after being sworn in as the country’s 42nd President this week…his words delighted a crowd of more than 100,000, many of whom had travelled to its modernist capital for the event, convinced the conservative populist can rescue their troubled country from virulent corruption, rising violent crime and economic doldrums…“We have a unique opportunity before us to reconstruct our country and rescue the hope of our compatriots,” he said…“We are going to unite the people, rescue the family, respect religions and our Judeo-Christian tradition, combat gender ideology, conserving our values”…he also added, “One of our strategies to get Brazil to climb from the lowest spots of the educational rankings is to tackle the Marxist garbage in our schools head on. We shall succeed in forming citizens and not political militants”…
3. The Trump economy continues to create jobs at a stunning rate: Job creation ended 2018 on a powerful note, as reported by the Labor Department this morning, with non-farm payrolls surging by 312,000 in December…the unemployment rate rose to 3.9% but for the right reason as 419,000 new workers entered the workforce and the labor force participation rate increased to 63.1%…the participation level was up 0.2 percentage points from November and 0.4 percentage points compared with a year earlier…for all of 2018, the manufacturing industry posted net job gains of 284,000, capping its best calendar year in 2 decades…in addition to the big job gains, wages jumped 3.2% from a year ago and 0.4% over the previous month…the year-over-year increase is tied with October for the best since April 2009…economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting job growth of just 176,000, though they projected the unemployment rate to fall to 3.6%…the wage number also was well above expectations of 3% on the year and 0.3% from November…
4. Full-time employment in the Trudeau economy actually FELL in December…how long will Canadians keep accepting this embarrassing under-performance vs. the United States, thanks to bad policy choices???…overall, the economy eked out a small gain of 9,300 jobs for December but the increase was driven by part-time work and self-employed workers, according to Statistics Canada…for all of 2018, the economy added 163,300 full-time jobs, a pace consistent with slower growth and well below the average annualized 225,000 since 2010…another negative in the Canadian labor market data continues to be wages, with annual gains still hovering at a sluggish 2% in December…wage gains for permanent workers were just 1.5% last month…
5. China has stepped up efforts to boost lending in its economy, with the central bank freeing up new funds and the country’s premier ordering big banks to lend to cash-starved small businesses…today’s moves by the central bank and Premier Li Keqiang, though modest in scope, aim to bolster a weak link in the economy – smaller businesses that traditionally have trouble getting bank credit and whose continued troubles threaten to hamper a turnaround…in separate, well-publicized meetings, Li ordered the heads of 3 of the biggest state-owned banks to allocate 30% of new lending to small businesses and to do so at low rates…he called such support crucial to stabilizing economic growth and employment…The People’s Bank of China, whose governor sat in on the meetings, later said it would reduce the amount of reserves Chinese banks are required to hold…the 1 percentage point reduction – to be carried out in 2 equal cuts on Jan. 15 and Jan. 25 – will free up a net 800 billion yuan ($116.6 billion) for lending, according to the central bank…the adjustment is the 5th broad-based cut to required reserve holdings since the start of 2018 and came earlier than many in the financial community expected, signaling Beijing’s concerns about growth…
6. This morning’s strong economic news has pushed the Dow up 480 points after 30 minutes of trading after yesterday’s 660-point loss, driven by weakness in the tech sector…the TSX is has added 152 points…Gold stocks have cooled off today but that should be viewed as another accumulation opportunity…the Venture is set to record its 7th straight winning session with the Index up 4 more points at 582…Venture short-term technical indicators have turned unabashedly bullish as this market continues its recovery out of a dismal Q4…Canada Cobalt (CCW, TSX-V) is on the move again…the world’s top-performing Cobalt stock in 2018, with a gain of 46%, is up 4 pennies at 54 cents in early trading…multiple potential catalysts are in play for January including more high-grade results from underground, Re-2OX developments and an update on the discovery of a new deposit type (Archean Gold system) in exploratory drilling east of the mine…
7. The Financial Post reports that less than a week before Pan American Silver (PAAS, TSX) shareholders vote on a $1.1-billion (U.S.) acquisition of Tahoe Resources (THO, TSX), 3 non-profit companies – far left groups who consistently bash the mining industry – have filed complaints with the B.C. Securities Commission accusing the companies of hiding key risks…the Post’s Gabriel Friedman writes that the complaints say the companies are overly optimistic in their timeline for the reopening of Tahoe’s flagship Escobal mine in Guatemala and failed to disclose all conflicts with the local community around that mine…Shin Imai, a director of the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project at Osgoode Hall Law School, who drafted the complaints, said that the case ties into a broader effort to improve mining companies’ disclosures about their community relations…“This Tahoe case is just a classic example that shows that if you don’t have a social licence and you don’t disclose that, then investors get screwed,” said Imai…he said that his clients in the case – Breaking the Silence Network, Earthworks and MiningWatch Canada – sent employees to visit the Escobal site, or live in Guatemala and thus “understand the state of affairs locally” at the mine…
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I expected a little more volume on IMR, someone playing games the last couple days putting in big bids at .105 and them removing them. Not sure what they are trying to do. Create a false impression of demand for the stock? If you really want to buy it why not just spend the extra half penny and take out the chunk at .11?
Comment by Danny — January 4, 2019 @ 12:05 pm
Every now and then BMR covers stocks outside of mining juniors, so maybe this might be up Daniel’s alley, but I have a stock on the TSX that I was looking at and it’s made no sense to me. I tried asking a few different people and no one’s been able to figure out why they’re so undervalued. Can BMR look into this?
The stock is a student housing and education provider, $MBA. 45 mil net income this year, total assets of 340 mil, share count of 80 mil (with an NCIB to buy back stock), and 95 mil liabilities. Trading at 70 cents since the December mini-crash while insiders buy on the open market.
Comment by Matt — January 5, 2019 @ 12:38 pm