Diamond News Archives

Brazil's President Michel Temer signed Tuesday a decree instituting the new Mining Code Rules. This adds up to the set of Federal Government initiatives targeted at overhauling and updating the Brazilian regulatory framework for the mineral industry, and supervenes the current rules that have been in place for nearly 50 years by now.

The erstwhile Mining Code Rules (instituted by Decree No. 62,934 of July 2, 1968) were outdated, the more so because the Mining Code itself has undergone several changes over the last 50 years – while the rules themselves remained unchanged. The 1996 overhaul even expressly stated that the mining code rules should be updated, but this has never come into being. This led to dysfunctional rules whose practical applicability and reliability waned as doubts arouse on account of their purported incompatibility with the Mining Code or the presence of obsolete concepts.

The new Rules have thus come at the right time. In fact, some of the matters regulated by them were even addressed at Provisional Measure No. 790 of 2017, which remained effective for some 120 days but eventually lost its effect as the National Congress did not vote it into law or reject it. Those matters that needed not be addressed by law were then incorporated into the new Rules.

The new Rules detail and update several provisions and mechanisms already envisaged in the Mining Code. For a start, the Rules address the scope of authority of the recently-created National Mining Agency (ANM), such being instrumental to establish the duties of ANM (currently under...

As we recently predicted here^[1] (when silver was $16.40/ounce), here^[2] (when silver was $16.41/ounce), and here^[3] (when silver was $16.35/ounce), the gold/silver ratio topping 80 has once again proven to be an infallible buy signal.

The silver price has never failed to outperform gold once the gold/silver ratio hits that magic number of 80; once it does, silver has always rallied. As of this writing, silver is trading at $17.21/ounce at the gold/silver ratio has ticked down to 75.

But if history is any guide, this is just the start of silver’s outperformance^[4]. The three times the gold/silver ratio topped 80 in the past, silver’s worst performance going forward was a 40% rally. The other two times? It went up over 300% and 400%.

This is the best of savvy investment strategy; take a simple mathematical equation (the gold price divided by the silver price), and track historical price behavior. When relative valuations hit extremes and then revert to historical means, without fail, time and time again, we seek to buy at these undervaluation extremes and wait for the inevitable reversion.

In like fashion, when the stock market is more overvalued than it has ever been before^[5], we don't get cute and try to figure out how much further the bubble can expand. We get out and wait for the inevitable crash^[6].

That's why we’ve highlighted the silver opportunity again and again when the gold/silver ratio tops 80.

One of my favorite indicators to look at when assessing prospects for silver prices is the gold to silver ratio. This essentially shows how many ounces of silver...

Gold futures gained Thursday, taking to solid ground after mixed trading initially surrounded the Federal Reserve’s revelation Wednesday that it will likely raise interest rates more aggressively in 2018 than previously signaled.

Now, attention turns fully to the European Central Bank’s policy update Thursday, with market expectations that the panel will update plans for its quantitative easing program, a development with implications across currency markets and, accordingly, for precious metals.

Ahead of that announcement, August gold GCQ8, +0.46%^[1]  was up $7, or 0.5%, to $1,308.30 an ounce. Gold prices settled with a modest gain on Wednesday, then fell back under the closely monitored $1,300-an-ounce level in electronic trading^[2], in the wake of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to lift a key interest rate.

Gold gained Thursday as the ICE U.S. Dollar Index DXY, +0.30%^[3] a measure of the dollar against a half-dozen major currencies, was down 0.2% at 93.33^[4].

Rising rates can diminish the appetite for assets like gold because the commodity doesn’t offer a yield compared against the perceived safety of other assets like government bonds. Higher U.S. interest rates can also boost the dollar and dull demand for dollar-denominated commodities.

But the rate differential between the U.S. and the ECB will be in the spotlight on Thursday.The €30 billion-a-month, post-crisis bond buys are slated to run at least until the end of September, but the ECB could extend it...

(IDEX Online) – The government of the Central African Republic (CAR) has appointed Peter Meeus, an international diamond specialist, as Special Advisor to the government. <?xml:namespace prefix = "o" ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /?>

The move is in line with the country's continuing process of complying with the standards of the Kimberley Process Certification System (KPCS) to make the production and marketing of its diamonds transparent and competitive, according to a statement.

He will be responsible for advising and assisting the CAR government on all matters relating to the implementation of this process, in particular by proposing performance-enhancing measures. He is also tasked with promoting the CAR's diamond sector.

Meeus is a founding member of the KPCS, former Head of the KP Monitoring Team for the CAR, former President of the Dubai Diamond Exchange, and former Director General of the Antwerp World Diamond Center (AWDC).

His appointment was announced in a Presidential decree on June 2, and was announced in Brussels by Leopold Mboli Fatran, CAR Minister of Mines and Geology, ahead of the intersessional meeting of the KP that will be held in Antwerp under the presidency of the European Union from June 18 to 22.

The Minister of Mines and Geology of the CAR said: "I am delighted with this appointment, which is an important step in the transformation of our diamond industry." The minister also stressed the need for reforms due to the large number of people whose lives depend on the diamond trade, the statement added....