Platinum price back in triple digits

Due to an platinum market that is an “abiding surplus”, the board at Aquarius Platinum (LON:AQP) placed its Everest mine on care […]

The mining sector's bellwether companies were all beaten down on Thursday as the price of metals and minerals continued to slide and economic indicators from across the globe painted a bleak picture for the mining industry.

The slide in the spot price of gold triggered by disappointment over the Fed's actions – or lack thereof – yesterday accelerated in Thursday trade with the precious metal giving up $50 or just over 3%.

After announcing an economic report today, shares in Prophecy Platinum traded hands at six times their usual volume.

"Natural resources companies with a pipeline of, say, five projects in five different countries are now likely to build just two or three of those. Thus, executives have the power to cherry pick which combination of country and project offers the best returns."

A vital revenue stream for platinum miners — chrome ore — may be choked off if ferrochrome producers are successful in lobbying for a protectionist export tariff of $100/ton in their desperate attempt to protect their own businesses from China’s burgeoning chrome refiners.

A hedging u-turn is in the making.

Aquarius Platinum, the world’s fourth-largest platinum producer by volume, has responded to a fall in prices for the precious metal by mothballing a mine jointly owned with Anglo Platinum, arguing that production had become uneconomic.

What a whippy week it was. Volatility spiked and then subsided into the end of the week which meant it was a great day-trading environment but then that petered off as ranges tightened for markets and stocks into the end of the week.