Sometimes sitting in a train as it glides away from the station it seems as if the platform is moving. The train seems to be motionless. It is an illusion. Metal prices are down against the US dollar. Or is it that the dollar is getting stronger? Demand supply fundamentals back commodity prices. The dollar … Read more
I headed west and north across Ireland in July for a few days with my son Ivor. It was a golf expedition as we do not fish or hunt. Ivor wanted badly to visit Sliabh Liag or Slieve League in English. Sliabh Liag is a mountain on the northwest coast along the Wild Atlantic Way of … Read more
Robin Williams said “life’s a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those that think”. The writer George Orwell wrote about the use of euphemism. To describe something which is the opposite of what it appears to be – calling a department that wages war the “Ministry of Peace”. We could come up … Read more
It is the best of times and the worst of times depending on the market sector. For mining and commodities it is the worst of times. Sentiment has become a visceral rejection of all things concrete. Industrial commodities abandoned in favour of all things nebulous such as IT stocks. It is high summer, July in … Read more
When things go wrong and will not come right, Though you do the best you can, When life looks black as the hour of night – A pint of plain is your only man. …. and so goes the first verse of Flann O’Brien’s (Brian O’Nolan) poem “The Workman’s Friend”[i]. A creamy pint of Guinness … Read more
As an economic geologist it has never ceased to amaze me how the non technical investor embraces the precarious process of mineral exploration and the intricate business of mining. In many cases it appears to me more like a reliance on luck riding a “flutter” and of often not inconsequential proportions I might add. In … Read more
When Chester Beatty died on January 19th 1968, at the age of 92, The Times of London said that: “He was the greatest of all living figures in the mining industry, and with his passing the world has lost one of its most romantic characters.” Chester Beatty was an extraordinary mining magnate and a collector … Read more
Tipping points or inflection points are curious phenomena to those inhabiting a linear world. The familiar anecdote of the frog in cold water is part of this linear world where he gets boiled alive if you very gently heat the water so that the rise in temperature is so gradual that the little amphibian does … Read more
The Bridge Builder An old man going a lone highway Came in the evening, cold and gray, To a chasm vast, both deep and wide. The old man crossed in the twilight dim; The swollen stream was as naught to him; But he stopped when safe on the farther side And built a bridge … Read more
I mentioned in my last blog before Christmas that the US has just over 8,000 tonnes of gold representing 26 tonnes for every one million Americans and the Chinese have just over 1.000 tonnes of gold in reserves representing just one tonne of gold per every one million of its population. I was intrigued therefore … Read more