White-Hot (Gray) Metals — For Now

Platinum, Silver, Copper, Aluminum, Roy-Cos, Trade Note

TCRs, Monday’s (again) record-high gold price is spreading to white (gray) metals.

So, another an up-cycle days day for catalytic converter and precious metal platinum … and for sister metal palladium.

Silver, too — as good as $28.08 an ounce just now. Silver has not been $28 USD since July 2021. See chart please.

Platinum is  at $975 an ounce (futures contract) for the first time since Jan. 3. this year. Palladium is rising, t00 — up $46 to 1,053. (Nickel, aluminum, speaking of white and gray metals, also are staging recoveries. See LME prices please.)

Copper is continuing an 8-week rebound that started Feb. 14 ($3.70 a pound); copper’s lead futures contract Monday is $4.28 (+1.2%).

I am working on another roy-co, one I do not own as of right now, Metalla Royalty & Streaming MTA * (Please see earlier tag of EMX Royalty, Elemental-Altus Royalty please).

Briefly:

— A year ago, spring 2023 (April 20), platinum notched a high of $1,107 an ounce. (See chart please.) Platinum output is in trade reports set to decline 1.5% this year — mostly linked to turmoil in Russia and labor, utility interruptions in South Africa. I have been buying Aberdeen Platinum Trust PPLT-NYSE regularly; I use it as a long-term resting place for cash, occasionally used to trade with, much as I do with Sprott Gold & Silver Trust CEF.

— That improving copper price has DRC Congo producer (and looming platinum, palladium producer) Ivanhoe Mines IVN, our largest nat-resources holding (80,000 shares), at an all-time high Monday with a market value of $21 billion CAD. Sister-co and copper explorer Ivanhoe Electric IE is gaining — yet still $4.80 USD below an all-time high of $16.45 set August 2023. I own it the Arizona, Montana, Utah, Saudi Arabia prospector ($1.3 billion USD market value).

— Skeptics of a continued investor push for precious metals are emerging. This article shows some metrics of ETF inflows and other takeaways that merit a scan — article here please.

* I promised another roy-co piece, with some pointers from Metalla’s Brett Heath. That is coming.

It looks time to add to mining roy-co holdings — one of the few metals-categories whose values have caught little of the 2023 investor flow into the equities. (Roy-co leader, $24 billion-dollar Franco-Nevada FNV, is down less than most yet still off 26% from an April 2022 high; FNV sports a 1.2% yearly dividend.)

I own EMX and Elemental ELE ELEMF, that first one, a Canada company HQ’d just outside of Denver, for more than a decade. See EMX/Dave Cole The Calandra Report please.

The thing that will interest our The Calandra Report subscribers, re: Metalla, is that Brett Heath and his marketing team have drawn “retail” shareholders from articles, YouTubes and a WHY  GOLD WHY NOW book — all from former Metalla board member E B. Tucker.

Now, Brett hopes to start drawing larger investors, gold fund managers and so on to Metalla shares. “We are just on the other side of transitioning our share register to more institutional from heavily retail,” Brett says.