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1. Gold has traded between $1,569 and $1,577 so far today…as of 7:00 am Pacific the yellow metal is up $3 an ounce at $15.73…commercial traders have been quietly and systematically covering their short positions…over the past week they unwound 41,310 shorts, leaving them with a current net short position of 344,788 contracts…Silver is up 4 pennies at $17.71…Palladium has jumped $37 an ounce to $2,250…key resistance, at the top of a symmetrical triangle, is $2,350…Copper is steady at $2.56…Nickel has rebounded 8 cents to $5.83 while beaten-down Zinc has fallen another penny to 96 cents…Crude Oil is 44 cents lower at $49.88…Crude Oil prices are down more than 20% from their January high after the coronavirus hit demand in the world’s largest Oil importer and fuelled concerns of excess supply…worries over supply were not alleviated on Friday when Russia said it needed more time to decide on a recommendation from a technical committee that has advised OPEC and its allies to cut production by a further 600,000 barrels per day (bpd)…the strengthening U.S. Dollar Index is up slightly at 98.74…the greenback has climbed steadily since the number of coronavirus cases began surging in China last month, pushing the Dollar Index to its highest level since early October…with many analysts concerned that disruptions to the Chinese economy will dent global growth, investors have been clinging to U.S. assets…a high dollar works against the Fed’s desire to see inflation pick up…the White House’s economic adviser on Friday said that the Trump administration does not expect the coronavirus in China will have a major effect on the U.S. economy…“There’s a lot of variables involved and things we don’t know.  Internally we have looked at a drop in GDP of perhaps two-tenths of 1% – that’s all we found so far.  We think it will be an absolute minimal impact,” said National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow…U.S. January retail sales figures due Friday will be important as consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of economic growth…retail sales are forecast to have increased by 0.3% month-on-month in January…

2. Inflation in China hit its highest level in more than 8 years last month as the coronavirus drove up demand for some consumer goods and shuttered business activity in parts of the country…China’s consumer price index rose 5.4% in January after rising 4.5% in December…the jump in prices comes as economic activity has been curtailed across large parts of the country by the coronavirus outbreak, though some of the closed factories are now starting to reopen…as of last night, the country had more than 40,000 confirmed cases and 908 deaths from the virus…the number of cases has exceeded the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003 but the mortality rate is far lower at around 2%…over the weekend, the Chinese government pledged to spend more than $10 billion to fight the virus…Beijing has orchestrated support for its companies and financial markets in the past week and investors are hoping for more stimulus to lift the world’s 2nd-biggest economy…

3. When Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell heads to Capitol Hill for 2 days of testimony beginning tomorrow, he’ll will face questions about how the central bank might respond to new economic uncertainties emanating from China…Fed officials cut their benchmark federal-funds rate 3 times last year, to a range between 1.5% and 1.75%, after raising it 4 times in 2018…they left the rate unchanged at their meeting last month and maintained their wait-and-see policy stance…Powell’s testimony will be made public tomorrow morning, prior to market open, and his hearing before the House Financial Services Committee is set to begin at 10:00 am EST…he is scheduled to appear Wednesday before the Senate Banking Committee…one thing’s for certain – the Fed has no desire or inclination to raise rates this year, and that’s positive for equity markets and precious metals…

4. The Trudeau government will pour gas on the fire of western separatism, and further damage Canada’s resource sector, if Alberta’s $20 billion Frontier Oil sands mine proposed by Teck Resources (TECK.B, TSX) is rejected by the federal cabinet later this month…at a Friday news conference, Alberta Environment Minister Jason Nixon flatly rejected any suggestion that Ottawa could placate the province with an “aid package” if it turns down the project…“Albertans are not looking for a Justin Trudeau handout.  We’re not interested in that.  We want Justin Trudeau and the federal government to get out of Albertans’ way, to let hard-working Albertans do what they do best, which is create prosperity for this province and create prosperity for this country”…Reuters reported Thursday that that federal officials were preparing various streams of funding for Alberta, including cash to help clean up thousands of abandoned wells spread across the province…Alberta Premier Jason Kenney told an audience at the Canada Institute in Washington, “It’s hard to overstate the response of Albertans, not just our government, but Albertans broadly, if this project were to be rejected”…Teck has already spent $1 billion during the past decade to clear a series of regulatory hurdles, invest in technology designed to lighten the mine’s carbon footprint and forge agreements with First Nations group…a rejection from Ottawa now would signal to investors that despite such efforts, projects can ultimately be scuttled by an “arbitrary political decision” made without any transparency, he said…“I think that would be a devastating message to send in terms of investor confidence at a time when we are struggling to attract foreign direct investment to the Canadian economy,” he said, speaking alongside Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe…“So the response would be very challenging”…demand for Crude Oil will continue during the coming decades even as energy transitions away from fossil fuels, Kenney added, and it’s better that the last barrel of Oil come from “a stable reliable democracy with the highest environmental and human rights labour standards on earth. Teck represents a pathway to that”…

5. This is getting insane, yet another example of how Canada has become dysfunctional: Commerce and travel disruption in parts of Ontario and Quebec (VIA Rail service) as well as British Columbia in recent days has been triggered by protestors sympathetic to the Wet’suwet’en “hereditary chiefs” who are illegally blocking construction of the CoastalGas Link pipeline in British Columbia…the Wet’suwet’en are an unelected, unaccountable, foreign-funded and anti-Canadian “fake” native band in northern B.C. that refuses to recognize Canadian laws…they have the full support of a radical anti-capitalist group called Red Braid Alliance for Decolonial Socialism…Red Braid effectively shut down Canada’s busiest port in Delta yesterday…“We’re part of a nationwide movement to shut down Canada in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en,” protest organizer Isabel Krupp said…“More than $1 billion of commerce moves through Deltaport every year.  We’re shutting it all down.  There’s no commercial traffic going in or out of Deltaport today”...late yesterday, a B.C. court granted an injunction against those protesters who also blocked the Port of Vancouver in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en pipeline opponents…meanwhile, the Wet’suwet’en and their radical supporters are also putting lives in danger…RCMP said Friday they have opened a criminal investigation into the alleged cutting of support beams on the Lamprey Creek Bridge near the main Coastal GasLink protest camp, making it unsafe for all foot and vehicle traffic…the $6-billion, 670-km Coastal GasLink pipeline has the support of all elected First Nations band councils along the route, including 5 of the 6 band councils in the Wet’suwet’en nation…the “hereditary chiefs” are the problem and all attempts at negotiation with these individuals have failed…their real agenda is revealed by Red Braid’s mission statement, “Red Braid is a revolutionary working class and Indigenous organization.  We fight to abolish colonialism, imperialism and capitalism, which are destroying our communities and the nonhuman world.  We fight for multiple worlds where the free, full, creative development of each person is the responsibility of all”…where is the political leadership in Canada to stand up to this nonsense?…

6. The Dow has added 49 points through the first 30 minutes of trading…Amazon (AMZN, NASDAQ) has hit a new record high, topping $2,100 per share…despite Friday’s losses, Wall Street posted its biggest weekly gain since June as the S&P 500 jumped 3.2%…strong economic data along with solid corporate earnings reports fuelled the market’s weekly surge…in Toronto, the TSX is up 22 points while the Venture is 2 points lower at 572…Hive Blockchain (HIVE, TSX-V), up a nickel at 34 cents as of 7:00 am Pacific, is the early volume leader on the Venture…the company announced this morning that it now anticipates about a 40% reduction in its operating and maintenance costs at its GPU mining facility in Sweden, compared with such costs under its previous service provider agreement, which it ended in November of last year…this improvement is the result of locking in a lower than anticipated electricity rate, stemming from an unusually warm winter in Sweden, for a majority of the company’s electricity costs via hedging agreements that will continue through 2020…electricity, which is provided through green energy, comprises the majority of the company’s operating and maintenance costs…Antibe Therapeutics (ATE, TSX-V) has been hot lately…the stock traded more than 13 million shares last week as it added another 8 cents to close the week at 65 cents…it’s unchanged in early trading this morning…

7. Canada’s government should fund initiatives like a proposed $1.6 billion project that would provide power and fiber optics to the country’s remote north and spur new business, said a Gold mining executive yesterday…Canada’s Infrastructure Bank on Wednesday signed an MOU to assess the project, which needs federal investment to get built and would run to Nunavut from Manitoba…“This has to be looked at as nation building,” said Agnico Eagle (AEM, TSX, NYSE) CEO Sean Boyd in an interview…Agnico, Canada’s largest Gold producer, runs 3 Gold mines in the Kivalliq region and is Nunavut’s largest private employer…“A big part of that funding has to come from the federal government to not only build the power line to benefit the current communities, but to look at it as a way to finally open up an area which has tremendous potential,” he said…Nunavut is a vast Arctic region – the size of Mexico – with a population of 36,000 mostly Inuit that separated officially from the Northwest Territories 20 years ago…though rich with mineral deposits, it suffers from a dire lack of infrastructure and all electricity is produced by diesel generators…electricity production for the territory consumes 55 million litres (15 million gallons) of diesel each year, and Agnico Eagle’s Nunavut sites require 80 million litres (21 million gallons)…“As we’re considering major projects and as we make new discoveries in the north, which we believe will be there, we need a cost structure that allows you to build those into meaningful businesses,” Boyd said…

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