Gold is absolutely surging, and uranium is still going strong. Let's see what the buzz is on these two metals.

Gold

A new all-time high

Gold hit a new all-time high on Sunday evening, briefly punching through US$2,100 an ounce. At the time of writing, the price of gold has sunk back down to around US$2,025, but many analysts remain bullish about the yellow metal.

“The anticipated retreat in both the USD and interest rates across 2024 are key positive drivers for gold,” Heng Koon How, the market head at UOB, said to CNBC. Other analysts say that as it cracks $2,100, $2,200 is clearly in view, with "less leverage" than there was during one of gold's previous peaks in 2011.

The World Gold Council says that 24% of all central banks intend to increase their gold reserves over the next year, strengthening institutional and official support. Fed Governor Christopher Wallace says he plans to loosen monetary policy if inflation data continues to improve in the near-term, with the Fed likely at least done hiking rates for now, if not yet actively cutting yet.

Meanwhile, geopolitical tension continues to ratchet up, with an unprecedented humanitarian crisis unfolding amid Israel's ongoing bombardment of Gaza.
 

Miners are still lagging far behind

He lays out a wide array of factors contributing to this underperformance, including permitting problems, widespread dilution, mainstream distrust and lack of interest, and a number of costly and unsuccessful takeovers.

The increasing cost of actually getting ounces out of the ground, much less exploring, is also certainly a significant factor:

The underperformance is even more pronounced in the junior mining sector, with the GDXJ ETF trading far below its 2011 high, but some of the most dramatic examples can be found in the world's biggest companies:

The question is whether miners will be able to close the genuinely huge gap between themselves and the gold price. If so, a lot of wealth could be generated—but that's a big "if" based on performance from the past few years.

 

Sponsored by: U.S. GoldMining In

 

Uranium

Uranium continues to surge, but it's still far off from its all-time hig

Uranium is experiencing a huge flood of attention, but it still has 68% to go to reach its pre-Fukushima levels. John Qukes @quakes99 posted an article from MarketWatch laying out the case for why companies like Sprott believe there is a “good probability the uranium price will exceed the previous record at some point during the bull market underway,” as CEO John Ciampaglia says. 

When will the bull run end?

In an interview with Antonio Atanasov @antonioatanasv , @UraniumInsider says that "uranium will likely peak once high prices increase mine supply. I actually think that is probably the most likely case. Between now and then, we could see a spike, and a fall back down … [but] what is the supply that is going to end this bull market? … You have to look at the potential mine supply, … if everything in Namibia comes online, Arrow is online, Denison is online, Mongolia is online, Uzbek's ramp, Dasa's online, Kazak's ramp, then we're in the late decade and we have a situation where, if everything goes right and all of these guys are producing, then we've got a pretty abundant supply situation, and we'll see prices level off and probably fall. But that's not happening in the next three, four, five years—it's just not.

Watch the full interview: