Mexico buys gold, a lot of it
This article originally appeared on ft.com
The central bank of Mexico bought nearly 100 tonnes of gold in February and March, the latest emerging market country to turn to bullion as a means of diversifying away from the faltering dollar.
The purchase is one of the largest by a central bank in recent history. The gold, worth $4.6bn at current prices, is equivalent to about 3.5 per cent of annual mined output. Continue reading »
Chile: mining engineers wanted
From the Commodities Note column on ft.com
Splashed over half a page of Sunday’s edition of Chilean newspaper El Mercurio was an advertisement attempting to entice Chilean mining engineers to Mongolia to work on Rio Tinto’s flagship Oyu Tolgoi project.
The timing couldn’t have been more appropriate: that day, several hundred bankers, traders and miners descended on Santiago for the largest annual gathering of the copper industry. Continue reading »
How would a renminbi appreciation affect commodity prices?
The commodity markets have got the Hebei heebie-jeebies – everything from copper to oil to iron ore has suffered in recent weeks on fears that China’s attempts to cool its economy will end up cooling its appetite for raw materials.
Ironically, though, the widely-expected appreciation of the rmb against the dollar is likely to be a small positive for commodities prices. Continue reading »
Is this a ‘China moment’ for the corn market?
Short answer: probably not.
The spectacular growth of China’s economy means many commodities markets have seen “China moments” – what happens when the world’s most populous country moves from being an exporter to a net importer of a particular resource (or vice versa in the case of finished goods). Continue reading »
| About this blog | Headlines email | Blog guide |
| Regulars | Series | Archive |
Stefan Wagstyl
Rob Minto
Pan Kwan Yuk
Jonathan Wheatley
Heba Saleh