Australian (ASX) Stock Market Forum

"The best place to be is in commodities"

January 05, 2013
That Was The Week That Was … In Australia
By Our Man in Oz

Minews. Good morning Australia. Your market seems to have got off to a strong start in 2013.

Oz. It certainly did. The metals and mining index shot up by an eye-catching 4.2 per cent in the first two days of trading for the year, but lost confidence on Friday to end the week up by a still impressive 2.4 per cent.

That rise by mining stocks was exactly double the 1.2 per cent achieved by the overall market as measured by the all ordinaries index, and substantially stronger than the gold sector where the index could manage only a modest rise of 0.4 per cent.

Minews. What’s behind the confidence?

Oz. Relief is the first factor at work as the U.S. opted to not stifle its economy with higher taxes and reduced spending - the threatened fall off the fiscal cliff. A second factor is evidence that the Chinese economy continues to expand, which is good news for most raw material exports, especially for iron ore, coal and copper.

Minews. Iron ore is interesting, has the recovery in share prices been overdone?

Oz. Quite possibly. The rebound in iron ore stocks has been remarkable since the sector hit the skids in the middle of last year. Much of the recovery, which mimicked a rise in the iron ore price, has come as steel mills rebuilt depleted stockpiles, a process which will eventually end, quite possibly causing the price to retreat again.

Minews. Let’s start the first call of the card for 2013 with iron ore, bearing in mind your warning that a correction might be around the corner.

Oz. Stars of the sector, after a few years in the doghouse, where Gindalbie Metals (GBG) and Grange Resources (GRR), both of which are in the business of producing high-value, but high-cost, magnetite iron ore. Gindalbie added A6 cents (24 per cent) to A31 cents after reporting the first shipment of processed magnetite ore, while Grange went a step further with a rise of A6.5 cents (29 per cent) to A37.5 cents.

Minews. Very interesting moves. Does that mean Australian investors are finally accepting the magnetite story?

Oz. Possibly, though the trick now will be to see how profitable the magnetite projects are after some horrendous cost overruns.

Continuing with the rest of the iron ore sector we saw a widespread uplift in prices. Among the more notable movers were: Fortescue (FMG), up A22 cents to A$4.86, Atlas (AGO), up A5 cents to A$1.81, Mt Gibson (MGX), also up A5 cents to A89.5 cents, Iron Road (IRD), up A2 cents to A35 cents, and BC Iron (BCI), up A5 cents to A$3.70. There were also a few minor falls, including IronClad (IFE), down A2 cents to A29 cents, and Latin (LRS), down A1 cent to A15 cents.
...

Source >> www.minesite.com
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January 07, 2013
Commodities Outlook: Gold Falls, But It's Quiet In Base Metals As The Threat Of The Fiscal Cliff Recedes
By Rob Davies


What financial comment there has been over the Christmas period has been dominated by speculation, and account of the progress, on negotiations between President Obama and the Republican Party about the “fiscal cliff”.

While these discussions were underway, and after a rather unsatisfactory fudged resolution, capital markets had a little party of their own.

Although with so many participants away, the moves may not be a good reflection of the sentiments of all investors.

The most dramatic change was the decline in the price of US debt. In the middle of December these bonds were trading with a yield of 1.7 per cent.

By the close of the first week of trading of 2013 the yield had increased to 1.93 per cent, indicating a fall of over 13 per cent.

In contrast equity markets had a ball and made some sharp one day gains, albeit in very thin trading.

Another casualty was gold which fell nearly three per cent to US$1,649 an ounce, a move that largely mirrored the gain in the dollar.

Reasonably good US payroll figures and optimism about the deal made the dollar look better than the yen.

In today’s world no one expects perfection. The trick is to find the least bad alternative and, bizarrely, the US seems brighter than Japan just at the minute.

Amongst all this turmoil base metals had a relatively quiet time and the LME index closed the first week of the year at 3,539.6, only 0.7 per cent up on its level in mid-December. This lacklustre response seems lethargic in contrast to the vigorous activity of other asset classes.

The markets seemed to have decided that US politicians will do nothing to prejudice whatever growth the American economy can deliver.

Any consequences from this action in terms of reducing the deficit and creating inflation can, the politicians are implying, be dealt with by their successors.

This fix is fine in the short term, and possibly even the medium term but over the longer term it is a different story, for two reasons.

Federal debt stands at 68 per cent of GDP, and is forecast to be either 58 per cent in 2022 on CBO estimates or 83 per cent based on Obama's spending plans according to J P Morgan.

Economists Rogoff and Reinhart presented good evidence in their book "This Time Is Different” that economic growth rates slow dramatically as debt reaches these levels.

The second problem is that 53 per cent of US treasuries are held by foreigners, and 17 per cent is held by the Fed. This is a very different situation from Japan where sovereign debt is held nationally.

The US is vulnerable to a change of sentiment and unless some politician addresses the problem it will cause the mother and father of an economic accident at some time in the future.

In the meantime world economic growth is increasingly being driven by China. And that suits commodities just fine because that country is already the largest consumer of metals.

The US is still the world’s largest economy, but some estimates suggest it will cede that position to China by 2020. It’s just that the metal market has already priced that in.

Source >> www.minesite.com
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From Byron Wien's 2013 surprises (7 Jan 2013)

Although inflation remains tame, the price of gold reaches $1,900 an ounce as central bankers everywhere continue to debase their currencies and the financial markets prove treacherous.
 
About That Large Drop in the VIX...
JANUARY 7, 2013

There has been a lot of talk regarding the recent record decline in the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) over the weekend and this morning. With a decline of 37% over the last five trading days, the current decline is the largest 5-day decline since 1990. Large drops in the VIX are generally considered to be indicative of investors perceiving there to be less risk in the market going forward. So are they correct?

Source >>> http://www.bespokeinvest.com/thinkbig/2013/1/7/about-that-large-drop-in-the-vix.html
 
January 12, 2013
That Was The Week That Was … In Australia
By Our Man in Oz

Minews. Good morning Australia, your market seems to have run out of steam after a solid start to the year.

Oz. That’s a fair description, but it’s hard to pin down precisely why prices dropped in a week when commodity prices picked up, and iron ore raced back to near-boom trading.

Minews. Now that is interesting. You’re saying iron ore hit US$158 a tonne and the iron ore miners fell?

Oz. That’s exactly what happened, which is a very good pointer to something reported in the New Year outlook from Oz you carried last week - neither investors nor company managers believe that the current iron ore price is sustainable.

Weakness among the iron ore miners also spilled over into the gold sector, but widespread falls there were probably more due to investors rotating funds out of gold into other sectors as reports of global economic recovery gain strength.

Overall, the metals and mining index on the ASX lost three per cent last week. The gold index lost four per cent, while the all ordinaries got away with a very modest decline of 0.2 per cent, propped up by bank and retail stocks.

Minews. Tricky in the mining sector, isn’t it? Gold falls because of a recovery, and iron ore stocks also fall because no-one believes the strength of the recovery.

Oz. It is getting a bit confusing, so let’s shuffle along to prices and leave the theorising to people on higher pay grades. And because it’s been in the news all week, we’ll start with iron ore, to illustrate the gap between the commodity and the companies producing it and exploring for it.

Out of the 20-or-so iron ore companies we track six rose and 14 fell, which really is quite remarkable given the sharp rise in the price of iron ore itself. The handful to rise included Iron Ore Holdings (IOH) which added A9 cents to A85 cents, and Gindalbie (GBG), which continued its recovery with a rise of A2 cents to A33.5 cents. Also on the rise was an explorer we rarely hear about, Nemex (NXR), which rocketed up by A8 cents (200 per cent) in thin trading to A12.5 cents after reporting progress at its Telimele prospect in Guinea.

The list of companies that lost ground was headed by Fortescue (FMG), down A13 cents to A$4.73. Also weaker were Mt Gibson (MGX), down A8 cents to A81 cents, BC Iron (BCI), down A10 cents to A$3.60, Grange (GRR), down A2.5 cents to A35 cents, Latin (LRS), down A1 cent to A14 cents, Ironclad (IFE), down A2 cents to A27 cents, and Cape Lambert (CFE), down A1.5 cents to A27 cents.
...

Source >> www.minesite.com
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January 14, 2013
Alcoa’s Aggressive Predictions For Aluminium Demand Have Come True In Spades,
Despite Initial Scepticism From Analysts
By Rob Davies

In any industry the people most likely to know what is really going on are those companies at its heart, whether producers or consumers.

But unfortunately whenever these participants express a view or an opinion they are often accused by observers of talking their own book.

So it is not surprising that Alcoa, the industry leader in aluminium, took the opportunity in its results statement for 2012 to refer back to the comments it made in 2010.

Then, with the world still raw with the shock of the global financial crisis, it said it expected aluminium demand to double over the next ten years from just under 40 million tonnes a year to 73 million tonnes.

That implied a compound annual growth rate of 6.5 per cent. Many commentators at the time thought that was far too optimistic.

In fact over the last two years demand has increased at an annual rate of eight per cent, and not just because of China.

The Chinese market grew at 12 per cent, significantly higher than the forecast made in 2010 of nine per cent.

But even more impressive was the five per cent expansion recorded by the rest of the world compared with 2010 forecast of four per cent.

Looking forward into 2013 Alcoa is being a little conservative and is only projecting a seven per cent global growth rate.

Even that equates to nearly 50 million tonnes of aluminium, so it is fortunate that supply is forecast to grow by enough to match this consumption and more. In fact Alcoa is projecting a surplus of 535,000 tonnes this year, mostly in China.

Maybe it was this rather downbeat outcome that was behind the 1.6 per cent fall in the aluminium price this week to US$2,074 a tonne.

That was worse than the metals sector as a whole which only fell 0.3 per cent as measured by the LME index.

This decline contrasted with the positive return from equities, although equities were less exuberant than the week before when thin markets exaggerated movements.

Bonds recovered some of the ground they had lost in the previous week when uncertainty over the US “Fiscal Cliff” peaked. The can has been kicked far enough down the road to avoid a trip hazard for the next month or so.

Some of the detail in the Alcoa report confirmed what most people think is going on in the world. Alcoa expects global aerospace to continue growing at nine-to-ten per cent while autos will manage a rather feeble one-to-four per cent expansion.

Auto in particular is being dragged down by a one to one-to-four per cent decline in Europe.

Heavy trucks are a brighter story, with a global aluminium offtake expected to increase by two-to-seven per cent in this category. Here again though it is contraction of six-to-ten per cent in Europe that constrains the big picture.

There is a similar story in construction. Europe, with a forecast decline of four-to-six per cent, is the only negative contributor to the projected rise of four-to five per cent around the globe. China’s contribution to this sector is expected to be an impressive eight-to-ten per cent.

Alcoa can be accused of talking up its own industry but the evidence from recent years is that it has been more accurate than most. Its expectations for this year are modest and it is hard to argue with that.

Source >> www.minesite.com
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January 14, 2013
Alcoa’s Aggressive Predictions For Aluminium Demand Have Come True In Spades,
Despite Initial Scepticism From Analysts
By Rob Davies

In any industry the people most likely to know what is really going on are those companies at its heart, whether producers or consumers.

But unfortunately whenever these participants express a view or an opinion they are often accused by observers of talking their own book.

So it is not surprising that Alcoa, the industry leader in aluminium, took the opportunity in its results statement for 2012 to refer back to the comments it made in 2010.

Then, with the world still raw with the shock of the global financial crisis, it said it expected aluminium demand to double over the next ten years from just under 40 million tonnes a year to 73 million tonnes.

That implied a compound annual growth rate of 6.5 per cent. Many commentators at the time thought that was far too optimistic.


Source >> www.minesite.com
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The simple fact is if pricing gets much better then the idle capacity in China will be started up again. Until the extreme excess capacity is removed I just don't see Aluminium pricing improving too much.

On another commodity, oil, I am wondering what impact the shale gas / oil revolution in the USA will have on the price. Should the US have a large reduction in their imports, surely the price has to drop.

From what I read China has pretty significant deposits too. They might be able to provide a lot of future growth from their domestic supplies?

For some reason i always kept thinking platinum would be the metal to invest in - but seems the market doesn't agree with me. Always thought it would be a better store of value, because at least it has a lot of industrial uses compared to gold.
 
January 19, 2013
That Was The Week That Was … In Australia
By Our Man in Oz

Minews. Good morning Australia. You seem to have had a better week.

Oz. We did, and we didn’t. Friday was reasonably strong, but until then the metals and mining index was underwater after the overdue downturn in the iron ore price. Amusingly - if you like black humour - much of the metals index’s near one per cent rebound on Friday came courtesy of Rio Tinto, after its “man overboard” announcement and the appointment of a new chief executive.

Minews. The Rio change seems to be viewed as a positive in Australia.

Oz. I suspect it is also in the UK, and that the fall in Rio shares on the London market reflects concern about the impact of the big asset write offs on profits and future dividend policy.

In any event, there’s little doubt that the Rio management shake-up helped wipe out a decline in the metals index on the ASX, leaving it flat for the week.

Gold companies did better, as gold rose back towards the US$1,700 an ounce mark. That helped the ASX gold index rise by three per cent. The other positive development down this way was a solid flow of discovery news and the rise of a few companies we rarely hear from, which indicates that speculators are busy hunting bargains.
...

Source>> www.minesite.com
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January 19, 2013
That Was The Week That Was … In Australia
By Our Man in Oz

...

Minews. Minor metals to close, thanks.

Oz. TUC and Tungsten led the way up in an interestingly stronger minor metals section, where investors appearing be developing an appetite for greater risk.

Titanium minerals developer Base Resources (BSE) had a strong week as construction accelerates at its Kwale mine in Kenya and potential government obstacles are cleared. It added A2.5 cents to A35 cents.

Graphite companies moved up, just. Talga (TLG) put on A1 cent to A30 cents. Syrah (SYR) added A12 cents to A$2.88, and Archer (AXE) was half-a-cent stronger at A19.5 cents.

Rare earth stocks, excepting TUC, generally lost ground. Lynas (LYC) slipped A4 cents lower to A63 cents, and Alkane (ALK) was A4.5 cents weaker at A63 cents.

Lithium stocks were mixed. Orocobre (ORE) added A9 cents to A$1.54. Galaxy (GXY) lost half-a-cent to A39.5 cents, but might have done worse after confirming the death of a second worker at its Chinese processing plant.

Source >> www.minesite.com
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Grains better bet than soft commodities, Macquarie (18 January 2013)

Grains represent agriculture investors' better bet for most of 2013, but it is soft commodities, in particular cotton and sugar, which will end the year on the up, Macquarie said.

The bank, in a major crop report, rated corn as its "favourite in the short-term" in agricultural commodities, forecasting a return in prices to an average of $8.50 a bushel in the April-to-June quarter, well above the level that futures are pricing in.

"The support of corn prices in the second half of the season will be the recovery of the US export programme," as soybeans takeover Brazil's export logistics.

Furthermore, there was "greater difficulty" in controlling ethanol demand, with a potential for greater exports to China too, to judge by cash market dynamics.

Source >> agrimoney.com
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January 24, 2013
In The World Of Base Metals Volume Matters Far More Than Price
Rob Davies

In the wake of Rio Tinto taking a US$14 million charge against its aluminium business it might sound a trifle odd to say that metal prices are less important than volumes.

But to understand why it makes sense, just contrast the most expensive base metal, tin, with aluminium.

Tin is on a roll. In the second week of January it gained another 1.1% to finish with a cash price of US$25,150 a tonne, although it’s slipped a little bit since to the current US$24,850. The next priciest base metal is nickel but that’s currently US$7,000 a tonne cheaper at $17,485.

Tin is the most valuable base metal by a country mile. So why don’t big mining companies, like Rio Tinto, devote all their efforts to the metals with the highest price?

The simple answer is volume. Global tin consumption in 2012 was about 364,000 tonnes. At current prices the whole primary tin industry therefore has yearly revenue of about US$9 billion.

Assume a reasonable operating margin of 20 per cent and the tin mining industry could be making a gross profit of about US$1.6 billion.

While that’s not bad it does assume that competition authorities would be happy for one company to dominate a whole industry. Moreover, such a scenario would leave that company massively vulnerable to one highly specialised part of the industry.

Now contrast that to the aluminium industry that every year ploughs through 40 million tonnes of the stuff. Even at the rather miserly price of US$2,000 a tonne, that consumption still equates to an industry that has revenue of US$80 billion - making it ten times bigger than tin.

More importantly the rate of aluminium consumption is growing in high single digit percentages as we saw in Alcoa’s results last week.

Compare that with tin where demand is hardly rising at all. It is far more profitable to get a get a big chunk of the aluminium market and grow with it, rather than defend a large market share in a flat business like tin.

That was why Rio Tinto wanted to expand its aluminium business in 2007. At the time it made a lot of sense and investor sentiment was not critical.

It was just unfortunate that the deal was concluded a year before the global financial crisis and that it coincided with a massive expansion in Chinese production, as China sought an easy way to monetise all the cheap hydro-electric power capacity it was building.

However, no industry demonstrates the remorseless logic of scale better than iron ore. And it is not surprising that the successor to Tom Albanese at Rio Tinto is Sam Walsh, the man who ran the iron ore business.

Despite what the media is saying about the Chinese economy slowing down, the fact is that it grew at annual rate of 7.9 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2012.

More important to miners is that industrial production expanded at an annualised rate of 10.3 per cent in the same quarter.

A key component of that measure is steel production which grew 7.7 per cent in 2012 to 717 million tonne. Continued expansion of this industry is expected in 2013, partly to help the 650 billion renminbi railroad construction programme.

That, and other infrastructure, is behind the 3.6 per cent increase that is forecast for Chinese iron ore imports in 2013. Iron ore might only be worth US$143 a tonne but the value of Chinese imports alone is worth US$110 billion.

That makes it far bigger even than aluminium let alone tin or the other metals and demonstrates how right the big miners have been to focus on bulk commodities.

Volume usually beats price in a business model. It was just unfortunate for Tom Albanese that his idea was right, but his timing was wrong.

Then again, if Rio hadn’t bought Alcan in 2007 Billiton could have completed its purchase of Rio in 2008. Which would mean it would be the one making the write-offs now.

Source >>> www.minesite.com
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January 26, 2013
That Was The Week That Was … In Australia
By Our Man in Oz

Minews. Good morning Australia. The rally on your market seems to have continued last week.

Oz. It did, but it’s almost a rally by stealth, creeping up by small steps and not always lifting the sector that we watch most closely.

Last week saw the overall market, as measured by the all ordinaries index, added another 1.3 per cent, continuing the longest upward rally in almost two years. Unfortunately, the metals and mining sector missed the boat, slipping 0.6 per cent lower. The gold index ended the best part of one per cent lower.

Minews. That seems an unusual reaction from mining stocks given China’s continued growth.

Oz. It was, but it also reflected the trend of the day which is the hunt by investors for companies generating a reasonable yield. Sadly, the management teams of too many miners are miserly when it comes to rewarding shareholders with higher dividends, or share buybacks, preferring instead to continue spending on exploration and project development.

There was also the instability factor introduced by the management shake-up at Rio Tinto and the expected shake-up at BHP Billiton, plus the imminent release of what are expected to be poor profit results by both companies.

Minews. All very interesting, of course, but let’s get on with the job at hand and talk about prices.

Oz. That might be a quick conversation because there were few eye-catching moves, up or down, with no discernible trend emerging in the different sectors. Gold stocks drifted lower, with a handful of exceptions. It was a similar picture in the other sectors where falls outnumbered rises in what was really a rather unexciting week.

Minews. Let’s go straight to gold because even if the trend was down there remains great interest in the metal as governments around the world seem to be encouraging higher rates of inflation.

Oz. Which ought to trigger a rise in the gold price, although that doesn’t seem to be happening yet, as can be seen in last week’s lacklustre market for ASX gold stocks.

Among the better performers was St Barbara (SBM), which added A9 cents to A$1.53 after earning a buy tip from Goldman Sachs which likes the improving production profile of the company. Regis (RRL) was another to catch the eye of investors, rising by A21 cents to A$5.17. And Endeavour (EVR) added a reasonable A26 cents to A$2.22 after reporting a positive preliminary economic assessment for the Hounde project in Burkina Faso.

The only other rises of note were posted by Troy (TRY), which put on A16 cents to A$3.79, Papillon (PIR), which rose A12 cents to A$1.60 and sector leader, Newcrest (NCM), which added A62 cents to A$23.62.

The list of gold stocks to lose ground was much longer and included: Silver Lake (SLR), down A17 cents to A$2.80, Beadell (BDR), down A7 cents to A98 cents, Alacer (AQG), down A27 cents to A$4.39, Ausgold (AUC), down A3.5 cents to A13 cents, Medusa (MML), down A5 cents to A$5.28, and Kingsgate (KCN), down a heavy A58 cents to A$4.40. Resolute (RSG) fell just half-a-cent to A$1.39 despite all the publicity coming out of Mali. Perseus (PRU) fell A14 cents to A$1.90 after replacing long-serving chief executive, Mark Calderwood.
...

Source >> www.minesite.com
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January 28, 2013
Production Numbers From The Majors Show Growth In Bulk Commodities, Which Bodes Well For The Earnings Numbers In A Few Weeks’ Time
By Rob Davies

January is when mining companies report their production data for the previous year. These results are always interesting in their own right, but also act a precursor to the release of their financial results which usually happens in February.

The production data gives a good indication of how the industry is doing, although of course it says nothing about metal prices or costs.

Even so, most companies are produce more of the stuff that is selling well and making a good profit and producing less of the stuff that is not so lucrative.

In terms of size of business there is no doubt that iron ore is the most profitable line for the major mining companies.

So it is no surprise to see that Rio Tinto lifted its attributable production by four per cent to 253 million tonnes in 2012.

BHP Billiton has a June year end so it isn’t quite so accommodating when it comes to making comparisons. But the two per cent increase it reported in iron ore production in the last six months of 2012 to 82 million tonnes demonstrates the widespread demand for the primary raw material for steel.

Even Anglo American was able to record four per cent growth in iron ore production for the year, to 43 million tonnes, despite strikes at the Sishen mine and the ongoing delays at its Minas-Rio mine in Brazil.

Anglo American had a good year with its metallurgical coal exports, which rose by 24 per cent increase to 18 million tonnes.

BHP Billiton didn’t do so well and its exports were flat at 18 million tonnes in the second half of the year. Rio’s performance was even worse as it recorded a three per cent decrease to 11 million tonnes for the full year.

The story in thermal coal was better for Rio Tinto, with output up 16 per cent to 21 million tonnes. BHP Billiton’s thermal coal output rose seven per cent to 18 million tonnes in the second half, while Anglo American recorded a total decline of 1.8 per cent to 69 million tonnes across all its categories of energy coal.

The other key material for steel making is manganese. Anglo American’s output rose 20 per cent to 3.3 million tonnes while BHP’s production in the last six months rose 11 per cent to 4.3 million tonnes.

Moving onto base metals, BHP Billiton’s aluminium output fell 10 per cent to 567,000 tonnes in the second half, which was the same rate of decline recorded by Rio Tinto over the whole year. That said it is a bigger player with annual output of 3.5 million tonnes.

Anglo American is growing its copper business and a two per cent increase in output to 172,900 tonnes is a good step.

It is outclassed though by Rio Tinto with its six per cent increase to 549,000 tonnes for the year and BHP Billiton’s 14 per cent rise to 569,000 tonnes in the second half alone.

But it’s not all wine and roses – in the nickel data we can see the stress. BHP Billiton reported a six per cent decline to 72,000 tonnes in its reporting period. Anglo American had a better experience over the year, reporting a 35 per cent increase to 39,000 tonnes, even allowing for a 25 per cent fall in the fourth quarter to 7,000 tonnes.

But of course that last quarter suggests that the overall rise in 2012 it won’t be repeated next year.

The woes of platinum have been well recorded, and the eight per cent production drop posted by Anglo American to 2.2 million ounces of platinum equivalent will not be a surprise.

Looking at diamonds in volume terms is not very helpful. Nevertheless, the 11 per cent drop recorded by Anglo American to 28 million carats is indicative of the pressure in the industry. It was echoed by a six per cent decline to 608,000 carats at BHP Billiton and a 12 per cent slide to 13 million carats at Rio Tinto.

All the miners produce other commodities as well, but the growth in the bulk commodities across the board bodes well for the earnings when they do come out in the next few weeks.

Source >> minesite.com
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