??Ruthenium??
Nope. Not gonna say it, I'm simply NOT gonna say it.
Where DO you get this stuff? (Don't answer, please...)
I can’t comment on some of their other non-traded commodities showing some manner of ‘proof’ or other, but I can comment on moly.
Moly is used in making steels, especially stainless and tool steels. Most moly in the world has been mined at copper mines, since moly often occurs near or coincident with copper deposits. As copper went up in price, some copper mines were mined out in the last several years and shut down, because without the copper “base” for the mine, the various other base metals they were mining in the area could not support to economics of the mine.
This has led to a small mining operation, General Moly (ticker GMO) putting a deposit in Eureka County, NV (Mt. Hope) into permitting for production. The Mt. Hope deposit has long been identified as a huge moly/zinc deposit, perhaps as much as 10% of the known world-wide reserves of moly. But until the recent price jump in moly caused by the shut-down of various copper mines that also produced moly, the start-up costs of a major mine (about $0.5 billion) were simply too high to pencil out.
Now GMO has put a plan in motion to start a major mine at Mt. Hope, and they’ve done this by selling 40% of the mine’s production at a forward contract price (the price/lb is undisclosed), 20% to Posco and 20% to Mittal, the #1 and #3 steel makers world-wide. Posco has also sunk $170 million of capital into the Mt. Hope operation. As soon as that mine comes online, you’ll see a sizable decline in moly prices. The mine is projected to be profitable down t $7/lb and produce moly for up to 44 years.