Eric Coffin, editor and mining guy behind the ‘Hardrock Analyst’, and a major speaker you will hear at most mining conventions around North America. We ask him to please turn on his crystal ball and give us a few projections for down the road.
Specifically we ask, for July 1st of next year, what he sees for the prices of certain commodities:
Gold$1750
Silver $32.00
Oil $95.00
Copper $4.00
Needless to say, for us folks in Alberta to see oil back at a reasonable number is hopeful and the surprise number is that of copper.
There are more than a few folks who suggest that copper is probably the best thermometer out there of world economic health. Coffin suggests that copper might fall in the short-term here, but he expects moves to be made that might just get some of the world economies up and running again.
He points to some of the developments in the last while, such as the Chinese, making a surprise drop in their interest rates yesterday, the second in a month. “They aren’t even waiting for the new guy to come in and run the place, Eric Coffin tells us, as it looks like they’ve decided to open their taps and the folks in China have the cash to get things going, which is helpful for the rest of the world,” Coffin adds.
Meanwhile, as far as the United States being concerned about their fiscal cliff, he wonders if they will be able to get a compromise done by the 31st of December, and needless to say that his concern is that they better get something done.
He points out that with the politics being what it is and the election in November, one worries, but if nothing else he hopes they simply kick the can down the road as many suspect about making the tough decisions. For sure, if no decision is made and all of a sudden you have a half a trillion dollars in cuts on January 1st of next year, it’s not going to be good.
As far as the junior mining market, we had gone to Coffin for some hand-holding as one other mining analyst was worried that we could have up to four years of quiet times in that sector because of world economic slack, but Coffin isn’t a believer. He does point out to us that the last time we experienced something like that was back in 98/99 when a combination of the Asian currency crisis and the Bre-X fraud had people avoiding the junior mining sector like the plague.
He suggests, while volume is just a fraction of what it used to be in the old days, and many junior mining companies are simply hoarding cash and not doing a lot of drilling, Coffin suggests that what we really need
is for somebody somewhere to hit something nice, and once again attract a little greed to the market.
As far as exploration plays out there to be watching, Coffin suggests GoldQuest with their Romero gold/ copperproject in the Dominica, would be his top pick. He suggests that they are probably drilling on the fourth hole now, but they probably won’t have a release out until they have the numbers on at least three holes. Coffin suggests, they have some expectations to live up to.
