Tofir 21.01.2002, 23:01 |
Nach Normandy Mining....Lihir Gold!![]() |
Gold Market Brief (1/21/02)........With U.S. markets in abeyance due to the Martin Luther King holiday, gold has been quiet. There really isn't much to report save a veiled reference in the Standard Bank report that an American is responsible for adding liquidity to the silver market -- liquidity which has taken that market considerably lower over the past few sessions. It doesn't take much imagination to conjure who that"American" might be. As for gold, the Newmont catching of the golden ring -- Normandy Mining -- continues to be the big news. Newmont vows to unwind Normandy's hedges -- a circumstance which would put a sturdy floor, if nothing else, under the gold price. The MiningWeb's Stewart Bailey frames the current battle for the heart and soul of the gold market"Some industry commentators have billed the industry's consolidation as a larger scale battle between hedgers and non-hedgers, with the proponents of forward selling touted as the oppressors of the gold price; non-hedgers the market's champion. Barrick Gold and AngloGold laugh off the polarisation, but the non-hedging fraternity insist it is a battle to the death. The Newmont-Franco Nevada twosome, effectively headed by arch gold bull Pierre Lassonde, has struck its first blow with the acquisition of Australia's Normandy, which it almost certainly has in the bag. Australia's Lihir, which has its production-base in Papua New Guinea, is its next target." I've updated the weekly and monthly gold charts above and added the World Gold Council's Annotated Price Chart for 2001. The weekly gold chart in particular indicates the changes in gold's behavior since the Washington Agreement was signed in 1999. |