Gunnison Copper, Rio’s Nuton get $13.9m tax credit to expand production in Arizona
The Johnson Camp mine is under construction, with first copper production expected in mid-2025.
Gold stocks in COMEX-approved warehouses have jumped by one-third in the past six weeks as market players sought deliveries to hedge against the possibility of import tariffs from incoming US president Donald Trump.
With Trump’s inauguration due on Monday, COMEX activity widened the spread between New York and London gold prices and caused sharp volatility in the part of the market known as the exchange of futures for physical (EFP), used as a hedge to general precious business activity.
“These are not the typical mass media concerns about increasing trade tensions or even trade wars, leading to a slowdown of global growth and fuelling demand for gold as a safe haven. Instead, they are centring around some technicalities of global gold trade – EFP,” said Carsten Menke, analyst at Julius Baer.
“Futures can be used to hedge gold physical positions, which regularly requires flows from Europe to the United States should local inventories not be sufficient.”
Trump has not mentioned precious metals in any form with his US import tariff threats, but persisting uncertainty was enough to drive CME gold stocks to 23.62 million ounces, the highest since November 2022.
Silver and platinum stocks in the CME-approved warehouses also jumped, leaving only palladium unaffected.
“Some industrial buyers will have bought Comex futures to hedge their risk of higher prices on upcoming deliveries. If they want to book physical shipments immediately instead, banks and brokerages are only too happy to help, but for a fee of course,” said Adrian Ash, head of research at online marketplace BullionVault.
“London vaults and logistics providers are very, very busy preparing and making shipments to the US,” he added.
Spot gold prices were last down 0.2% at $2,708 a troy ounce, while US gold futures slid 0.1% at $2,748, meaning an unusually large premium of $40.
The price spread between New York and London prices was inflated by activity in the EFP, private agreements which allow traders to swap futures positions to and from physical, unallocated accounts.
“Intraday moves and volatility in the EFP have been extraordinary and unheard of with the EFPs, at times, moving more than the spot prices,” said Nicky Shiels, head of metals strategy at MKS PAMP SA.
(By Polina Devitt and Ashitha Shivaprasad; Editing by Veronica Brown and Aurora Ellis)
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