The industry tends to obsess over the moves in the shiny expensive metal and this period of bullish action for the PM miners has concentrated that focus, but what really matters in mining these days is this:
Copper. For one thing, it’s a playing field for the really big mining money (BHP, RTZ, Glencore, FCX, even Vale and we can continue). For another, the junior-myopic among us need to keep clear that without significant price support for copper, gold’s own moves are always going to be limited (and before you come back with the ‘dollar collapse’ stupidities, recall that IKN is vaccinated against the asshole end of the goldbug community and lives in the real world).
But back to copper and the repeated failure of the Doctor to break U$2.30/lb is all the signal you need about the asthenic state of the Chinese economy. Get that into your head and chew it over a while.