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1. Gold has traded between $1,280 and $1,287 so far today…as of 7:00 am Pacific, the yellow metal is up $5 an ounce at $1,285…data on the People’s Bank of China website shows Gold reserves rose to 61.1 million ounces in April from 60.62 million a month earlier…in tonnage terms, last month’s inflow totalled 14.9 and the increase follows the addition of almost 43 tonnes in the 4 months through March…that means that since the Chinese central bank began its latest series of purchases in December, the PBOC has built up its Gold holdings by nearly 60 tonnes…still, China’s Gold reserves are very low by international standards, at just 2.5% or so of total foreign-exchange reserves…Silver is off 4 cents at $14.76…Copper, Nickel and Zinc are all under continued minor pressure at $2.76, $5.34 and $1.24, respectively…Cobalt remains steady at $15.76…Crude Oil is down slightly, trading just below $62 a barrel, while the U.S. Dollar Index has slipped one-tenth of a point to 97.47…President Trump has ordered new sanctions on Iran, this time targeting the Islamic Republic’s export revenues from its industrial metals sector, and vowed to keep squeezing Tehran unless it “fundamentally alters” its policies…“Today’s action targets Iran’s revenue from the export of industrial metals – 10% of its export economy – and puts other nations on notice that allowing Iranian steel and other metals into your ports will no longer be tolerated,” Trump said in a statement…
2. Rhetoric and “positioning” ahead of high-stakes U.S.-China trade discussions has rattled the equity markets again this morning…Liu He, China’s vice premier and top trade negotiator, will have dinner with President Trump’s trade team tonight in Washington, just hours before the U.S. says it will hike tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods…Liu will dine with Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and other U.S. officials as the world’s 2 largest economies try to salvage a deal, according to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders…Liu is not expected to meet with Trump today…markets will be watching for any clues or updates to leak out of the dinner…at a boisterous rally in Florida last night, President Trump said China “broke the deal” – a reference to a slew of changes demanded by China late last week that undermined key parts of a 150-page draft agreement…
3. A new jolt of energy is needed to wake Gold up this year, according to Scotiabank which has also adjusted its previous “long Gold” 2019 investment theme…“We continue to believe that it won’t take just one attempt to break the cyclical range earmarked by $1,350 as Gold remains a 2nd-tier investment while it awaits for a $-negative or vol-positive catalyst to evolve,” the bank’s commodity strategists wrote in a new report…“Our original overarching 2019 investment theme – long volatility, short politics and short the $ (which is best expressed by being long Gold) – drastically changed the past 2 months. Gold should do well in a low (and falling) real rate environment…but unless there are some macro fear and complacency is shattered, it’s tough to see Gold really outperform,” the report added…investors have been frustrated with Gold’s narrow trading range this spring, but Scotiabank believes that the yellow metal’s performance has been decent considering the macro circumstances…
4. The Golden Triangle just got another boost…not long after Australian-listed Newcrest cut a deal with Imperial Metals (III, TSX) for 70% of the Red Chris mine, Newmont Goldcorp (NEM, NYSE) is investing $17.6 million into GT Gold (GTT, TSX-V) for a 9.9% interest in that company after GTT’s world class Copper-Gold discovery at Saddle North last summer…Saddle North is on the same trend as Red Chris, just 15 km northwest of that mine…Newmont Goldcorp will be the back-end purchaser of a flow-through private placement (11.5 million shares) at $1.53 per share, a 78% premium to GTT’s closing price yesterday of 86 cents…the money that is going into the ground in key parts of Northwest B.C. this summer is phenomenal and can only lead to a major acceleration in interest from investors over the coming weeks and months…this morning’s news makes yesterday’s news from Colorado Resources (CXO, TSX-V) that much more significant as CXO’s Castle Property (expanded through its deal with Buckingham Copper) features a multi-kilometre mineralized trend, west to east, that hooks up with Saddle North and Saddle South (similar geological and geophysical signatures)…Castle is a gem, so much so that it led to a messy internal battle at Colorado starting in mid-2017…unfortunately, this prevented any serious work from being carried out at the property – a travesty…everything now has suddenly changed, however, given the deal between Colorado and privately-held Buckingham Copper…CXO is up a penny at 8 cents while GTT, battling through a resistance band between 90 cents and $1, has added a nickel to 91 cents as of 7:00 am Pacific…
5. Infill drilling by Marathon Gold (MOZ, TSX) has produced new high-grade mineralization with abundant visible Gold in the Main Zone of the Leprechaun deposit at Marathon’s Valentine Lake Gold Camp, further defining a continuous corridor of high-grade Gold ranging from 30 m to more than 80 m wide, extending from surface for 300 m to the bottom of the open-pit and beyond, and stretching along strike for more than 270 m…results included 126 m grading 4.3 g/t including 12.2 g/t over 19 m (VL-19–681); 153 m @ 3 g/t including 12.5 g/t over 8 m (VL-19–686); and 5 g/t over 30 m including 14.1 g/t over 8 m (VL-19–688)…this current program of drilling downward at high-angle to and through the shallow SW dipping en-echelon stacked QTP-Au veining demonstrates significant additional width and higher Gold grades for the Main zone…it also shows the continuous nature of the high-grade Gold from surface to depths beyond the bottom of the open-pit, particularly significant in areas of limited previous drilling along the southwestern portion of the Main zone Gold corridor…
6. The Dow has lost 314 points through the first 30 minutes of trading on the continuing “China chill”…in Toronto, the TSX has slipped 71 points while the Venture is 3 points lower at 598…Wheaton Precious Metals (WPM, TSX) has posted Q1 net earnings of $57.4 million (U.S.) with the company generating $120 million in operating cash flow, driven by record Gold sales volumes…meanwhile, Franco Nevada (FNV, TSX, NYSE) reports record revenue and income in the 1st quarter, announces higher dividend and also says that Pierre Lassonde plans to step down as board chair after the next annual meeting in 2020…by then, he will have been chair for a dozen years…the company says it earned $65.2 million (U.S.), or 35 cents a share, up from $64.6 million in the year ago period…Metallis Resources (MTS, TSX-V) is up in early trading after news last night regarding its Thunder North target, contiguous to the southern border of Garibaldi Resources‘ (GGI, TSX-V) Nickel Mountain Project…a petrographic thin section analysis has confirmed the presence of olivine gabbronorite with 8.55% MgO which points to the potential to identify a prospective intrusion at Thunder North…this area represents part of the Texas Creek suite “Lehto Pluton”, a segment of the Eskay Rift that has seen no historic exploration for Nickel sulphide mineralization…meanwhile, a high-resolution VTEM Survey generated 25 coincident conductive and magnetic anomalies outside of the footprint of the volcanic center at Thunder North…this highlights the potential to identify conductive sulphide mineralization in association with magnetic gabbroic rocks…another key takeaway is that olivine gabbros are more widely distributed along the western margin of the Eskay Rift than previously thought, with gabbroic boulder samples containing 25–26% MgO from Harrymel Creek, 2.2 km to the east of Thunder North…
7. Bitcoin’s 9-day rally has pushed it back above $6,000…the biggest cryptocurrency outperformed its closest peers again in the digital market today and has now rebounded more than 90% from its trough last December…it’s the latest milestone as the wild ride continues for the decade-old token, which crashed last year from a peak of more than $19,000 in 2017…the price has been bolstered by an increasing interest in Bitcoin trading from investment institutions…Fidelity Investments will begin to allow customers to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, Bloomberg reported earlier this week…other trading platforms like Robinhood have already started digital currency trading…Bitcoin is still prompting fierce debate over its future and viability…major Bitcoin skeptic Nouriel Roubini called crypto the “mother and father of all bubbles” at a conference earlier this week…Roubini was debating with Bitcoin bull and former hedge fund manager Michael Novogratz, who had a different point of view…“The realty is there’s a tremendous amount of stuff going on. In some ways, there’s been a small miracle. The debate is over, Bitcoin won. It is now seen by people all around the world as a legitimate place to store their value”…
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