Donald Duck gold coins sold out ‘in minutes’

London and Toronto-listed Noventa announced Friday that it placed 73,600,000 new ordinary shares at a price of 25 pence each with institutions and other investors to raise roughly $30.3 million. The specialty metal miner with operations in Mozambique is also extending an offer to shareholders to subscribe for a total of 17,500,000 new ordinary shares to raise up to a further US$7.2 million. In London stock in Noventa duly plunged 24% to 27.75 pence in line with the placing price of 25 pence.

In a surprise announcement Papua New Guinea on Friday introduced a plan to hand state ownership of mineral and energy resources to landowners, a move that may prove disastrous to foreign miners developing massive projects and pushing into new regions of the resource-rich country. The announcement by PNG's new leader comes ahead of elections in 2012 that many observers have warned is bound to lead to civil unrest. The move may also derail PNG's economy which is booming with growth this year expected to reach 11%. The mining industry employs roughly 30,000 people and supplies 80% of export earnings.

Despite a relatively stable day for stocks on Wall Street, gold futures continued its upward spiral on Friday trading above 1,850/oz after touching a new record high of $1,881/oz in morning trade. A string of bad news about the US economy including declines in manufacturing activity, higher than expected retail inflation and higher jobless numbers on top of deepening fears about the soundness of Europe's financial system, sent investors scurrying for the safe haven of gold and silver. So far this year gold has gained more than 30% and silver, trading at $42.20/oz on Friday, has soared 40%.

The darkening economic outlook this month has sent investors out of the palladium market in droves, but the coming months of uncertainty are likely to be more of a cooling-off period than an end to their romance with last year's star performer.

Gold futures on the COMEX traded above $1,800/oz on Thursday as bad economic news continues to mount and market sentiment turns. On Thursday, the S&P/TSX Composite index fell nearly three percent. The S&P/ASX 200 was off 3.51%. Markets worry that Europe could pull the world economy down due to a spreading euro-zone fiscal crisis.

The world Zinc surplus for the first half of 2011 has increased by 8% compared to the entire 2010, with the Chinese inventories at historically highest levels reported the World Bureau of Metal Statistics (WBMS)

The South Korean market led the way for hefty stock losses in Asia Friday, as risk appetite evaporated on a fresh wave of concerns about global growth, with shipbuilders, exporters and financials among the hardest hit.

While Venezuela President Hugo Chavez may have little to gain from seizing the half he did not already own of the only private gold miner left in the country, bringing home the 211 tonnes of gold reserves, worth $12.3 billion, held overseas, is a different story altogether. CTV news reports bullion traders are preparing for one of the largest transfers of physical gold in recent history – about 17,000 standard 400-ounce bars – from Europe back to the South American state. While billions of dollars worth of gold is traded every day, only a tiny proportion of it moves from vaults in London, New York and Zurich.

Bloomberg reports prices in the $150 billion fertilizer market are lagging behind gains in food costs, providing farmers another incentive to boost production and leaving a gap for potash producers to further increase prices which have already surged 29% this year. Potash is 36% cheaper than in June 2008 when corn rose to a record, according to data from ICIS, a commodity-pricing company. In contrast food prices gained 4.3% over the same period, an index of the United Nations shows.