The comedian Steven Wright made the distinction, “There’s a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot. Whether you’re fishing with talent or not, the right reelâ€such as this one made by Daiwa in Cerritos, Californiaâ€can inject your fishing efforts with contemplative style: Before Daiwa’s founding in 1958, Hardy was [...]
US companies buying from the southern Euro-zone states could be forgiven for looking at the unfolding debacle on the continent with glee, not from wishing their suppliers any ill will but simply because as the Euro crashes against the US dollar their purchase prices in dollars tumble with it. But before US companies ramp up [...]
This is the second post in a two part series. You can read the first post here. But supply is a different matter. Platinum mine production comes from just two sources. 78% comes from southern Africa and 12% from Russia. Average mine production has been falling, on average by 1% per annum over the last [...]
As investment products, platinum and palladium were often in the shadow of the king and queen of the PGM’s gold and silver. But in the last few years, the two metals have reached a much wider investor audience via Electronic Traded Funds, particularly the physically backed ETF’s launched by market leaders like ETF Securities. There [...]
This is the third post in a three part series. You can read the first post here and the second post here. Before we get into Intel’s strategies for handling conflict minerals, I’d like to mention a lesson I once learned in my consulting years you can’t just point out a problem without creating a [...]
This is the second post of a three part series. You can read the first post here. If I were an activist, I’d try to examine a few of the supply chain issues tied to this conflict minerals policy issue. The first area to examine involves truly understanding the complexity of managing a global supply [...]
Last week we reported on an initiative by the US State Department urging industry to stop using “conflict minerals specifically designated as tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold originating from the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo). The issue has gained additional steam this past week as a couple of key activist groups have taken to [...]
As the German government banned the naked short selling of EU government debt and the stocks of 10 leading German Banks, the markets reacted with a mixture of disbelief and anger as billions were wiped of the value of shares across the main European bourses. What does this have to do with the US and [...]
