1. Gold climbed as high as $1,411 overnight, its best level since August 2013…as of 7:00 am Pacific, bullion is up another $7 an ounce at $1,406 after last week’s surge…exchange-traded-fund investors are moving back into Gold with Friday’s inflow the largest in close to 3 years, according to Commerzbank…“Gold is currently being bought by both ETF investors and speculative financial investors,” the bank said…“The Gold ETFs tracked by Bloomberg registered an inflow of over 32 tonnes on Friday, which took place exclusively in the SPDR Gold Trust. This was the largest inflow in nearly 3 years (and the biggest daily percentage gain since in the SPDR Gold Trust since September 2008). ETF holdings have thus been increased by 95 tonnes since the beginning of the month. The Gold price has risen by $100 during this time”…Russia continues to add Gold to its reserves, buying another 200,000 ounces or 6 tonnes of Gold in May, according to the country’s central bank…this put the total of Russia’s total Gold holdings at 2,190 tonnes as of June 1, up by 0.3% from May…large speculators sharply hiked their bullish positioning in Gold futures for the 4th straight reporting week, according to data compiled by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission…Silver, in the early stages of what could turn out to be a monster move in 2019, is up slightly at $15.33…Copper, Nickel and Zinc are all relatively unchanged at $2.68, $5.44 and $1.17, respectively…Crude Oil has added a nickel to $57.48 after a 9% jump last week…political tensions between the U.S. and Iran continue to simmer…President Trump has announced plans for further sanctions against the rogue regime after Iran’s downing of a U.S. drone last week…the U.S. Dollar Index, clearly in a downtrend, has retreated one-tenth of a point to 96.12…
2. Bitcoin’s bull run continues, with the cryptocurrency climbing above $11,000 (U.S.) this morning, likely a combination of traders buying into their own fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) as well as institutions chasing the tail end announcement of Facebook’s Libra project…Bitcoin’s ride back accelerated in April, puzzling onlookers trying to pinpoint a reason for the surge…a study by Indexica, an alternative data provider, showed 3 main drivers: a more complex conversation surrounding Bitcoin, fewer concerns about fraud and a shift in the tense of how Bitcoin is talked about from the past to the future…the advent of Libra “is validating the crypto space and sending all the major digital coins higher,” said Edward Moya, chief market strategist at Oanda Corp. in New York…“Bitcoin volatility is likely to persist, with $12,000 and $15,000 as the next two critical resistance levels”…
3. The pool of negative-yielding government bonds around the world hit a fresh record high of $13 trillion last week…a number of European countries’ intermediate government bond yields sagged to record lows…French and Swedish 10-year yields fell below 0% for the first time ever…close to 100% of all debt issued by the Swiss government, from 1-month to 20-year maturities, now carries a negative yield…that’s closely followed by Sweden (91% of all debt), Germany (88%), Finland (84%) and the Netherlands (84%) – no wonder Gold has been soaring…
4. Gold’s most recent move through $1,400 an ounce could attract more buyers than the metal’s previous key $1,300 level, Scotiabank says…“There’s an extraordinary amount of $1,400 strike (vol) owners. Overall, there is a growing ‘FOMO risk’, where Gold could attract more buyers at $1,400 than $1,300, reaffirming the belief of some well-known investors that if $1,400 breaks, $1,700 (somewhat of a stretch) will happen ‘very quickly’,” commented Scotiabank commodity strategist Nicky Shiels…
5. Socialist Bernie Sanders has a new crazy plan, consistent with the new direction of the Democratic Party…he’s now proposing a tax on financial transactions, including a 0.5% tax on stock transactions and a 0.1% tax on bonds to erase the country’s $1.6 trillion outstanding student loan tab…the Presidential candidate’s legislation would release all 45 million Americans from their student debt…outstanding education debt in the U.S. has eclipsed credit card and auto debt…the average college graduate leaves school $30,000 in the red today, up from $10,000 in the 1990’s, and 28% of student loan borrowers are in delinquency or default…Sanders’ plan would also make 2 and 4-year public colleges and universities tuition-and-debt-free…“This is truly a revolutionary proposal,” Sanders told The Washington Post…“In a generation hard hit by the Wall Street crash of 2008, it forgives all student debt and ends the absurdity of sentencing an entire generation to a lifetime of debt for the ‘crime’ of getting a college education”…
6. Wall Street, ignoring Crazy Bernie, has pushed the Dow up another 39 points through the first 30 minutes of trading…equity markets have welcomed the announcement that a full-blown standalone U.S.-China ‘bilateral’ meeting will be held on the margins of the annual G20 Summit in Japan starting this Friday…the Dow (through last Friday) is up about 7.7% in June…if the gains hold, it will be the Dow’s best monthly performance since October 2015 and its best June since 1938…in Toronto, the TSX is off 15 points in early trading…the Gold Index, which pushed above important resistance at 211 last week, is aiming for its 10th straight winning session…nearest resistance is in the high 220’s…the Venture is flat at 593…the Venture has slipped 1.4% this month, though that’s a much better performance than the Canadian Marijuana Index which was down 9% for the month entering today…Canopy Growth’s (WEED, TSX; CGC, NYSE) weaker than expected 4th quarter financials were mostly due to challenges scaling up at its largest greenhouse facilities in B.C. and Quebec – roadblocks that cost it $24 million in operating expenses for facilities not yet cultivating, cultivating but not yet harvesting, or facilities that had under-utilized capacity…between January 1 and the end of March this year, Canopy sold 9,326 kilograms of cannabis to domestic and international markets, about 800 kilograms less than what it sold the previous quarter, which reflected just 10 weeks of post-legalization recreational sales…it generated $82.3 million in gross revenue from weed sales, with $68.9 million coming from the recreational market, a slight decline from $71.6 million in the previous quarter…Canopy brought in $94.1 million in net revenue in its 4th fiscal quarter, up slightly from the previous 3 months…about a quarter of the company’s overall gross revenue came from other streams besides cannabis, including sales from medical cannabis device manufacturer Storz and Bickel that Canopy acquired earlier this year…WEED is trying to hold support at its still-rising 300-day SMA at about $51…
7. Robert Friedland’s Ivanhoe Mines (IVN, TSX) reported this morning that with the onset of the dry season in the Congo (DRC), construction of the new highway directly linking the company’s Kamoa-Kakula Copper Project to the Kolwezi airport, located southeast of the city of Kolwezi, is progressing rapidly…The new 34-km, east-west road is approximately 25% complete and is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2019…when complete, the road will significantly improve Kamoa-Kakula’s transportation corridor that is being used to bring in mining equipment and construction materials, and that will be used to transport copper concentrates…the new road also will improve the safety and commuting time for employees between Kamoa-Kakula and Kolwezi and Lubumbashi, as well as for mine visitors arriving at the Kolwezi airport…the new road will provide Kamoa-Kakula with a direct, high-quality connection to the national road between Kolwezi and Lubumbashi, and to a proposed, new south-bound provincial road that will connect to Lumwana, Zambia and the Zambian rail system, via a planned new border crossing…this proposed heavy-haul route to Zambia would significantly streamline truck freight to and from Kamoa-Kakula…Ivanhoe is above $4 a share for the first time since the start of 2018…
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