Recently in minerals Category

The housing market's impact on the entire economy can not be understated. As nearly two dozen sub-prime mortgage companies have gone under in the past few months, economists are beginning to worry that the real estate collapse may soon spill over in to other areas. Even Alan Greenspan, the perennial optimist, admitted today that the country is on the brink of a recession. To many, the timing of these bankruptcies were unpredictable. But for those who watch the copper market closely, much of this could have been predicted.

Over the past week, an escalation of violence in Guinea is causing disruptions to the bauxite supply coming out of the country. With the imposition of martial law a few days ago, shipments to the main port of Guinea have been halted, giving aluminum speculators reason to take notice. If the violence continues to be an issue, the price of aluminum may soon begin to feel the effects of the current conflict in Guinea.

By Jim Jones

CAPE TOWN (ResourceInvestor.com) -- “It’s dangerous when bankers try to predict the future,” said Mark Tyler, Head of Mining and Resources at Nedbank at this year’s Mining Indaba.

But this opening statement by Tyler did not prevent him from gazing into his crystal ball and to come up with some sobering thoughts on the current minerals boom.

During the Roman empire, ruthless leaders became fascinated with the possibility of world domination. By extending its military and conquering lands throughout Europe and Egypt, Rome became arguably the greatest sovereign state the world has ever seen. Eventually, however, it became a mammoth too large to contain, and enormous amounts of money were required to sustain Rome's control over distant lands. Without enough gold in the bank to finance their operations, the government decided to trick its citizens, by placing less gold into each Roman coin.

By Charlotte Mathews

JOHANNESBURG (Business Day) -- The biggest events on global mining calendars this week will be the release of year-end results by resources giant BHP Billiton tomorrow and by platinum miner Impala Platinum on Friday.

Of all the materials currently utilized by humans, zinc is the one with the most versatility. It is an essential material in the production of skyscrapers, a vital nutriet to agricultural crops, and an increasingly important additive in medicines. While its use are diverse, the price of zinc is still highly coordinated to the construction industry, as its predominate application is for the galvanization of steel.

JOHANNESBURG (Business Day) -- Uranium has definitely been in the spotlight this week.

The U.K. government released its Energy Review, which, as expected, gave the go-ahead to building new nuclear power stations. JSE- and Toronto-listed uranium company sxr Uranium One [TSX:SXR] announced it was negotiating two separate acquisitions of uranium mills and properties in the U.S. Reuters reported that a new investment fund, Geiger Counter, was launched in the U.K. this week to invest specifically in uranium companies.

After a bull move of historic proportions copper has finally seemed to “quite down” some. Typically, after a large move such as this a market will enter an expanded trading range. While we don’ t know what the implied volatility of any option is, we do know all the other factors. Therefore, we can input these other factors - time till expiration, strike price etc., into an options pricing model, such as Black Scholes, and calculate what the implied volatility is.