Welcome back to our weekly update. I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and we're going to run through a few of the week's biggest stories in the mining industry. If you enjoyed this video, don't forget to hit the like button, subscribe to our channel, and of course, leave us a comment below. Let's get into it. The silver price was on the rise once again this week. It surged past the 66 per ounce level on December 17th, hitting a new record before pulling back. As for gold, it spent much of the


period around the 4330 per ounce level, although it rose as high as 4360 on December 18th, approaching its own all-time high. Investors were eyeing November US consumer price index data, which came out on December 18th. It was up 2.7% year-on-year, while core CPI, which excludes the food and energy categories, was measured at 2.6%. Those figures were quite a bit lower than analyst estimates and data collection issues caused by the US government shutdown have left market participants questioning the results. Notably, Bureau


of Labor Statistics officials had to make certain methodological assumptions because the October CPR report was cancelled entirely. The Bureau also started November data collection later than usual, driving concerns about a rebound in numbers for December. US jobs data for both October and November came out this week as well, showing that the unemployment rate for last month rose to 4.6%. The highest since 2021. While 64,000 jobs were added in November, 105,000 were lost in October, and revisions took 33,000 jobs away from


the months of August and September. Outside US economic data, it's worth noting that for silver, there's still a lot of focus on behindthe-scenes actions that could be impacting the price. Here's what Substack newsletter writer John Rubino had to say about that. >> And a lot of the uh the kind of discontinuities that we're seeing in the silver market right now are due to the fact that the big exchanges like ComX um may not have enough silver to satisfy the demands of futures contract holders.


In other words, there are a lot more people out there with long futures contracts that could come in and demand silver than there is silver to satisfy that demand. And uh you know the number of people who are standing for delivery uh on futures contracts is rising and the amount of silver in these exchanges is shrinking. So you're seeing you know sometimes games are being played. There was that uh when the silver exchanges went down for a while because there was a quote unquote cooling issue. Just as


silver was going up like $3 an ounce. Um things like that. And that is kind of normal in squeezes. The exchanges will do a lot of weird things to uh to keep from having to default. >> The link to the full interview with John will be below and I highly recommend watching it. I'd be remiss if I didn't also take a moment to mention Platinum. While gold and silver have been making headlines, platinum's 2025 rise has been quiet but significant. It's up about 105% year-to date and nearly hit 1970 per ounce this


week. I tend to think of platinum as similar to silver in that they both have precious and industrial sides and they both seen persistent deficits in recent years. Platinum's deficit has definitely helped it rise this year, but looking forward to next year, the World Platinum Investment Council is expecting a balanced market. When I saw that, I wondered if it would mean lower prices in 2026, but that may not necessarily be the case. Edward Sturk said there are a couple of nuances in the council's


outlook. For example, it's anticipating profit taking from exchange traded funds, but if that doesn't happen, then the platinum deficit may persist. He also noted that balance in 2026 wouldn't erase years of deficits. The other thing to bear in mind in terms of a balanced market is actually a balanced market doesn't solve for the fact we've had three years of deficits. It doesn't in any way um you know I suppose rebuild above ground stocks and it's the shortage of above ground stocks


that seems to been one of the major catalysts behind this price action and behind the market tightness. So I think a balanced market is is one where um you know clearly it's not in as deep a deficit as as we forecast for for this year. Um, but certainly it doesn't mean that the market tightness, uh, the shortage of metal in the market is going to be solved. >> I'll leave the link to the full interview with Edward below. Definitely check it out so you can get a more complete sense of the platinum picture


in 2026. It's not only precious metals that have been hitting new highs this year. The price of copper has been climbing as well, hitting a new all-time high of close to 12,000 per metric ton last week on the London Metal Exchange. It's pulled back slightly since then, but market watchers agree the copper outlook remains strong as rising demand meets constrained supply. In fact, I've been asking experts what they think the top performing asset of next year will be. And copper has been a popular pick. Lobo


Tra of independent speculator.com chose the base metal as his highest confidence trade of 2025 and he said he's sticking with it next year. Here's what he had to say about copper. So top pick for 2026 is copper. Similar reasons to 2025. The copper price has been kicked around up and down by what I think of as sort of extraneous issues, but the fundamentals I mean the demand scenario just looks phenomenal and the supply has been really constrained. Um it's been exceptionally constrained this year


because we had four major copper mining accidents. uh some including fatalities unfortunately. Um but that's not something you can you know track or put a trend line or something. These things happen. So my thesis is not copper because there's going to be more mining accidents. Uh but just copper because we need more and finding permitting and building these mega deposits that are needed takes a lot of time and it's not happening fast enough. >> I'll leave the link to the full


interview with Lobo below as well. Thank you for watching. If you like this video, make sure you hit the like button and subscribe to our channel. We'd also love to hear your thoughts, so leave us a comment below. Australia.