Which US presidential candidate does gold prefer?
Gold loves chaos and should be hitting new highs, especially with inflation coming down and with it, two rate cuts likely before year’s end.
In what it shouldn’t come as a surprise for anybody who has been following the news in the last three month, South Africa reported Thursday its mining output dropped 8.3% on the year in September.
The annual fall, the biggest in five months, was sharper than the 4.5% economists had forecasted as strikes crippled the industry which accounts for 6% of the country’s gross domestic product.
Today’s data from Statistics South Africa shows what high a price the country’s economy has paid since August when police shot and killed 34 protesters outside Lonmin’s (LON:JSE) Marikana platinum mine, northwest of Johannesburg.
Copper, chromium ore, and platinum group metals, registered the highest negative growth rate, Statistics SA reported.
But the main contributor to the 8.3% plunge was platinum group metals (PGMs), which contributed -5.2%, since most mining strikes in August took place at platinum operations.
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