RE:My bet is future"
Simply too much land for it not to happen" I'm still trying to get over that one. Patchh is probably laughing so hard he's flatten 1000' of sagebrush. I once had a nurse from Texas, Texas mind you, that she couldn't get over how much empty space was here in Nevada; and the Great Basin Desert doesn't stop there, it keeps on going into another two states.
It’s big, and you can call it "land" if you want, cuz' it sure as Hell ain't wet, but don't make a mistake and call it soil - that it ain't. It's all just rock in various sizes down to grains of sand and more of it than flatlanders can imagine.
I like to tell folks who get lost and come by the shack in hopes of salvation, that "there's a whole bunch of nothing", and a hundred bucks to guide then back to the payment again is only fair, and besides the extra 20 miles I add in treacherous mountain crossings I figure makes it all worth every dollar.
Just remember that more money was made and lost on the San Francisco stock exchange than all the gold and silver Virginia City ever produced: and why? Because of dreamers who didn’t want to miss out. I love all these projections of earnings, "if copper was $7 then I’ll be rich", which are mathematically true, however we have to get to $7 copper first. So, it seems to me that understanding the future price of copper is far more instructive than imagining what it will be like if and when we get there.
So maybe we should be talking about that, the future price of copper, but I know predicting the further economy (demand) is much more complicated, opaque, and uncertain; and if I squeeze my eyes real shut real hard, it all goes away. Nonetheless there are things that IMO bear watching:
- China's Evergrande crisis is spreading to the rest of the property sector, with numerous companies defaulting.
- Fantasia, Sinic and China Properties Group are among the other developers to have failed to meet payments.
- Economists worry that contagion in the property sector could knock out a key engine of Chinese growth.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/evergrande-crisis-china-property-sector-developers-default-fantasia-sinic-cpg-2021-10
“Chairman Powell inferred that the Federal Reserve is ready to use interest rate hikes to combat inflationary pressures. He added that Inflation continues to have the risk of moving higher, and persisting for a longer period than it had originally anticipated. Today is the perfect example of how enhanced inflationary pressures and the reaction to higher inflation by the Federal Reserve create cross-currents that take gold higher as well as pressure pricing lower. Gold futures basis most active December contract opened today at $1783.70. Continued concern about mounting inflationary pressures took gold prices substantially higher with the precious yellow metal breaking through $1800 in trading to a high today of $1815.50 before comments made by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Today's statement by Jerome Powell also alarmed equities traders as the Fed Chairman discussed stimulus tapering and upcoming changes in their extremely accommodative monetary policy. In regards to tapering, Chairman Powell said that the U.S. Central Bank was "on track" to begin reducing its purchases of assets.”
OK – Let’s substitute gold in this paragraph for something that has a major effect on copper prices -
Today is the perfect example of how enhanced inflationary pressures and the reaction to higher inflation by the Federal Reserve create cross-currents that take copper lower as well as pressure pricing higher. Continued concern about mounting inflationary pressures took copper prices substantially lower … Okay, so what this tells us is the market is in a state of flux in which we can expect high volatility, and what having this knowledge tells us is not to panic, but to buy on the dips which are likely to be multiple before reaching a steady valuation based upon earnings. What will maybe someday be, is nice to ponder, but the market opens in a few hours and money is waiting to be made or lost.
b.