Category — Commodities

If graphene is new to you, the best way to describe it is that it’s a totally new, man-made material that will turn the world on its head.

Although graphene is about as high-tech as it comes, it also sits in my camp as it’s derived from graphite, a commodity mined in a very small number of locations globally.

What makes graphene so exciting?

Well for one thing, graphene conducts electricity better than anything, including copper, silver or gold. It has been used to make microprocessors that are orders of magnitude faster than silicon based ones. Because it’s also not rigid, it can be used to make large hi-definition screens that can be folded away in your pocket.

Graphene is also stronger than anything else known to man. A sheet just one molecule thick is totally invisible, yet strong enough to support the weight of a newborn baby.

And a sheet the width of Gladwrap could support an elephant wearing stilettos! (So they say anyway…I look forward to seeing the photographic evidence…) [Read more →]

One of the main stories not being told about today’s oil market is the next round of turbulence set for the Middle East. It’s the oil war scenario, but with a new spin.

Last year when Byron King and I attended the Platts Crude Oil Conference, a main takeaway was an interesting OPEC break-even chart that shows how much money OPEC nations need to keep their governments funded. Take a look:

Click to enlarge

All’s well at $100 oil – all isn’t well at $80 oil. And all hell breaks loose if prices stabilize even lower at, say, $60…

1. The US oil boom is bigger than expected. As I see it, this is more of a ‘duh’ observation. I’ve yet to see it slow down since 2008. In fact, this week, the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its Oil Market Report claimed that America’s shale boom is growing even larger than expected. It’s also set to have a profound effect on OPEC. Which brings me to the second theme…

2. OPEC is also set to produce (or have the capability to produce) a heckuva lot of oil. One main driver of that supply growth is Iraq. After a turmoil-filled decade, Iraq is coming back on line in a big way – and could add another 3 million barrels per day to the oil mix by 2018.

So you see, once you start lumping together all of this oil, the market seems a bit flush. [Read more →]

Last week the market sounded the latest in a recent series of warning signals for a new bull market in resources.

You probably don’t realise it, but the Australian resource sector just put in its best week in more than four years.

Over the week the Metals and Mining index gained 9.4%.

Major moves like this aren’t common. You have to go back to March 2009 to find a bigger weekly gain. This is important. Moves of this size are often typical of violent changes in trend.

Sure enough, that move in March 2009 was the week that the mining sector began a two-year bull market in earnest.

So with a similar sized move last week, the evidence is now really mounting that investors should plan for the next resource rally… [Read more →]

What if I told you that mining boom hadn’t even got started yet?

…Or that commodity prices have another fifteen years to keep rallying?

It’d be music to the ears of resource investors who have had a tough few years.

It’s tough to imagine in this bearish environment, but this is exactly what we heard from an expert in an exciting new presentation with our buddy Dan Denning recently…

Phillip J Anderson, of businesscycles.biz, sat down in front of the cameras with Dan a couple of weeks ago. Most of the talk revolved around Phil’s theory on property cycles.

It’s a cracking interview. We haven’t been exactly bullish on Australian property here at Money Morning. But Phillip made an interesting bullish argument based on a predictable 18-year cycle.

He sees the US property market leading the Australian market by about a year and a half, and as US prices are starting to pick up slightly, he’s very bullish on Australian property. [Read more →]

Precious metals, energy and commodities recently hit a rough patch.

But will these low ‘pullback’ prices last forever? Even in the face of what seems (to me) as an extreme wave of inflation rushing over us?

Today we’ll cover all the bases. Starting with crude oil…

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil is in the low-US$90s per barrel, while the iconic Brent Crude price just over US$100. That’s low, by recent standards, for two reasons.

One reason is that global oil demand growth is moderate, due to the creeping worldwide lack of economic confidence. China has slowed. Japan is moribund. Europe is a mess. The North American economy is iffy, on the best of days.

This widespread lack of confidence may or may not morph into the next recession (pleasant thought, eh?). But the global economy is a big, arm-waving subject, and let’s not go there just now. [Read more →]

That’s the second day all done and dusted.

I’m just about done.

Everyone was flagging today and the crowd in the conference hall visibly thinned out.

I spent the afternoon at a separate resources conference that was taking place nearby. It involved fund managers and some of the mining companies from the Mines & Money conference.

I managed to get a lot of one-on-one time with management in one sitting. It was like speed-dating with resource stocks.

That was kind of the focus for me today, chatting to management…I hit up about 25 companies. I can’t talk about them here, but I’ve got a stack of new ideas for Diggers & Drillers.

I made sure not to miss the unmissable Robert Friedland talk this morning. He promoted his Ivanplats Ltd [TSX: IVP] company. I need to take a closer look at this, but if I got the right end of the stick he has some monumentally big projects, or ‘disruptive’ projects as he called them.

The main one is a platinum, palladium, rhodium, gold, copper, and nickel mine in South Africa that he described as being bigger than the world’s two gold companies – Barrick Gold [NYSE: ABX]  and Newmont [NYSE: NEM] – put together. He’s not one to talk things down! Whereas the width of the average platinum seam is a metre, he described this as being 20 metres thick. [Read more →]