Don't Panic...Yet!

Morning Miners!

It is 6:47am, the coffee is hot and if you are the world it might be a good day to call in sick. The ole Colonel is more worried about getting a carburetor kit for my 1973 F-250 than the swine flu. Apparently I'm in the minority, world markets reeled on concerns about the spreading swine virus and the possible need for even more capitalization in major U.S. banks. I heard a mid level government official on CNBC say, "Don't panic...yet!" Boy, that should make everyone feel better.

In the meantime Singapore traders hammered oil futures below the $50 benchmark as the Mexican flu took a trip to Asia. Gold dropped $20 in early trading on the NYMEX, commodity-sensitive currencies are getting clobbered and the dollar and Japanese yen are the flight to safety du jour. Surprisingly, the DOW and S&P are looking pretty resilient after an initial drop at the open.

Nonetheless, analysts are rushing to cover prior optimism about an early global recovery:

"The commodity revival over the last three months is fundamentally a dead cat bounce," said Charles Dumas, director at consultancy Lombard Street Research in London. (WSJ, 4/28/2009)

Phooey. I'm going down to the Eureka Supply to check on that carburetor kit, let's wait until the dust settles from this stampede before we draw too many conclusions.



Here's a daily reminder of the first quarter conference calls for the big mines in our area:

Barrick (ABX) Tomorrow, 4/29 before market open
Newmont (NEM) Thursday, 4/30 10:00am (ET)
General Moly (GMO) not scheduled

Enough talk, let's walk the walk:

Oil dropped $1.02 in early trading to $49.12(June contract). The dollar ("Dixie" or .DXY) has pulled back a little to 85.446. The commodity index (.CRB) is down 0.31% to 217.52 (gee, things are getting better already!).

Gold is down $19.1 to $889.1 (June contract); Silver is down $.555 to $12.400; Copper is down $.595 to $1.9260 (most-active, July contract); Molybdenum is still asleep below $8.

The DOW is up 14.81 points to 8039.81; the S&P 500, up 1.32 points to 858.83 (hmm...someones feeling better). Miners are down a bit:

Barrick (ABX) $29.25 down 0.86%
Newmont (NEM) $40.61 down 1.07%
General Moly (GMO) $1.42 down 0.04%
Freeport McMoran (FCX) $39.17 down 0.51% (a bellwether mining stock spanning gold, copper & molybdenum)

Steel stocks are mixed (a "tell" for General Moly):

Nucor (NUE) $38.99 up 0.04% - domestic steel manufacturing
ArcelorMittal (MT) $24.64 down 0.70% - global steel producer

Cheers,

Colonel Possum