Gold down again, some miners selling at loss

Gold has risen between Christmas and New Year in 8 of the last nine years, if the trend continues the yellow metal could end the year around $1,650.

FLSmidth has been awarded a contract worth approximately USD 105m (approximately DKK 600m) from the Mongolian company, Mongolyn Alt (MAK) Group, to supply a greenfield copper concentrator for a mine some 500 kilometres from the capital city Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

The discovery of a massive new coal reserve in Xinjiang Uygur is hoped will help meet China's coal requirements, which are set to grow to 1 gigaton during the 12th 5-year plan.

While the yellow metal has struggled in the last few months, many analysts are still expecting big things from gold in 2012.

Betting that copper prices would rise, Barclays Capital traders lost tens of millions of dollars, sources say, the bank said the losses were not "big" and that there was no "abnormal" trade.

The substantial capex required for the development of a rare earths mine, compounded by major miners' lack of interest in mining rare earths, may spell trouble in meeting future demand.

A major Canadian bank is predicting better months ahead for copper and oil.

The Japanese tsunami and subsequent Fukishima nuclear accident in March challenged uranium market sentiment. A retrospective of expert commentary on this still-promising sector from the Energy Report.

Tens of thousands of residents from Haimen, China, who protested the construction of a coal-fired power plant earlier this week, are now being arrested.