Hedge funds slash bullish wagers on gold over Trump election win
Hedge funds and other large speculators boosted net-long positions by 11% to 197,362 as of Nov. 12, the lowest in 14 weeks.
Canada’s mining and energy industries are facing a looming worker shortage caused by the pending retirement of large numbers of baby-boomer employees, said Monday The Mining Recruitment Group (MRG).
According to the Vancouver-based executive search firm, from the top managers interviewed, only 61% indicated that they had no intentions of retiring or reducing their workloads over the next five years, which mean 39% of those in the boardrooms are planning their departure in one form or another.
What makes things more alarming is that only 22% of executives stated that their companies had any sort of succession plan in place.
“In the grand scheme of things, five years is a blink of an eye and we will likely see the cascading effects of this start to pick up in steam in a very noticeable way within the next year or two,” said the firm’s president, Andrew Pollard.
The latest MRG Survey includes the answers of 162 mining executives whose companies are listed at either the TSX or TSX-V, revealed their outlook on the strength and viability of the sector is more positive than in the previous surveys.
Pollard said that while the issues faced by miners are mostly the same that at the end of 2012, “it is evident we are in the midst of a recovery, no matter how tepid it has been to this point.”
Gold, Copper and Silver
In terms of what commodities will likely see the greatest gains over the next three years, gold is still the top choice, with 74% of mining executives thinking it will shine the brightest.
Copper came a close second with 64% of respondents expecting to see massive appreciation in the metal, while silver rounded out the top 3 at 53%.
Prospects for Uranium have fallen off, down from 53% in MRG’s last polling to 33%. The executives say Nickel, Zinc and Iron Ore are the three commodities with the highest likelihood of depreciating in value over the next three years.
Image by Flip Schulke, Wikimedia Commons
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This must relate to Mining executives of large or medium sized mining
companies. In my experience the management of Junior companies never retire,
just do less work for the same pay until they are forced out.