The reason why platinum (and other PM) prices collapsed..
cohodk
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Excuses are tools of the ignorant
Knowledge is the enemy of fear
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cohodk
Posts: 19,129 ✭✭✭✭✭
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First, miners have to learn how to mine precious metals profitably on earth where they have cheap oil, electricity, and gravity to assist them. Even with completed mines they have trouble mining for a profit.
Newmont reports earnings on Wednesday. That should be interesting.
Mark
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
Platinum, you say? Sell, Sell, Sell!
I knew it would happen.
<< <i>First, miners have to learn how to mine precious metals profitably on earth where they have cheap oil, electricity, and gravity to assist them. Even with completed mines they have trouble mining for a profit. >>
And yet, they persist in doing it (mining on Earth) anyway. One wonders why.
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
<< <i>
<< <i>First, miners have to learn how to mine precious metals profitably on earth where they have cheap oil, electricity, and gravity to assist them. Even with completed mines they have trouble mining for a profit. >>
And yet, they persist in doing it (mining on Earth) anyway. One wonders why.
Exactly.
Too many positive BST transactions with too many members to list.
<< <i>90 million tons of platinum (and other PMs) discovered
That's as good an explanation as anything else I've heard.
Here's a warning parable for coin collectors...
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<< <i>First, miners have to learn how to mine precious metals profitably on earth where they have cheap oil, electricity, and gravity to assist them. Even with completed mines they have trouble mining for a profit. >>
And yet, they persist in doing it (mining on Earth) anyway. One wonders why.
I'm referring to the past 24 months only. Miners were mining quite profitably from 2001-2013. And probably did fine most of the years from 1970-1995. Things go in cycles. They got too bloated, bought too many resources, many of them uneconomic. So the washout of getting rid of that excess leverage continues. They will become profitable again, especially considering that their input costs have been shrinking with commodities being crushed. The input costs to send off a mining team on a rocket still has some bugs to be worked out....lol. The first risk is that the rocket doesn't blow up just after lift off.
The miners have learned many times before how to mine profitably. But like everything in the overall economic cycle, they lost their way for a while. And they will find it again. As long as there is a need to mine for copper, iron ore, zinc, aluminum, lead, and other metals, there will be a place for gold and silver that often are found along side them.
I find it interesting that there are up to 90 TRILL tonnes of platinum on some asteroids, yet the earth itself which was formed from collisions too, hasn't produced much more than 10,000 tonnes of platinum in all of history (vs. 165,000 for gold). That fits in a box of 25 ft per side. Per some scientists, Platinum is 2x more abundant in the earth's crust than gold. Yet nearly all of the world's platinum comes out of 3 South African mines and 1 in Russia. It is very difficult and expensive to process. Approximately 10 tons of ore must be mined - sometimes almost a mile underground at temperatures greater than 120 degrees Fahrenheit - to produce one pure ounce. The total extraction process takes six long months.....so you take a trip around the earth for at least 6 months while you process it in on the asteroid. The platinum is here on earth, but we just can't get it yet.