Fitch Ratings Raises Saudi Arabia IDR, Says World Bank Reason and High Dependence on Oil Remain a Weakness for the Country's Rating

[SMM Gold Flash] Lake Victoria Gold reported new metallurgical testwork for weathered ore at Area C of its fully permitted Imwelo Gold Project in Tanzania. Attrition scrubbing followed by desliming increased 24-hour gold extraction from 49.99% to 84.54% in agitated-leach testing. Bottle-roll recovery reached 88.15% after pretreatment, while gravity-recoverable gold also increased. The work was conducted by Nesch Mintech Tanzania in Mwanza. The company has identified attrition scrubbing and desliming as the preferred pretreatment route for further optimisation of the clay-rich near-surface material. Lake Victoria Gold says the results complement earlier work on deeper material, where recoveries of approximately 96–97% were reported. Importantly, the reported recoveries relate to tested pretreated fractions and do not yet represent overall whole-ore plant recovery; further mass-balance and optimisation work is planned.

[SMM Gold Flash] Aurum Resources reported new assay results from 22 diamond holes totalling 6,172.8 metres at the BST1 deposit at its Boundiali Gold Project in Côte d’Ivoire. The results include 2.63 metres at 76.74 g/t gold from 195.2 metres, including 1.3 metres at 155 g/t, together with 24 metres at 6.31 g/t from 108 metres, including 7 metres at 19.25 g/t. Several intersections extend beyond the existing BST1 resource envelope. The results will feed into Aurum’s planned Boundiali Mineral Resource update targeted for early Q4 2026. The company says mineralisation remains open along strike and at depth, while drilling continues across the project. The results are therefore an exploration and resource-growth development rather than additional production. Boundiali currently has a 3.22-million-ounce JORC Mineral Resource, while Aurum is advancing a definitive feasibility study.

[SMM Gold & PGM Flash] A new study published in the Journal of Commodity Markets finds that platinum has exhibited broader and more persistent co-movement with inflation and real interest rates than gold. Researchers Arusha Cooray and İbrahim Özmen examined monthly data from July 1999 through December 2024 across the US, Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands, using turning-point analysis, wavelet coherence and time-varying Granger-causality methods. The study found gold’s macroeconomic relationships were comparatively weaker and more fragmented, while platinum and silver showed broader synchronization, particularly in the US and Germany.​ The researchers attribute platinum’s stronger macroeconomic sensitivity in part to its substantial industrial exposure, meaning its price reflects not only monetary conditions but also manufacturing activity, investment and supply constraints. The findings do not establish platinum as a universally superior inflation hedge: the relationships varied across countries, periods and monetary-policy regimes. Instead, the study highlights a fundamental difference between the metals, with gold’s broader monetary and defensive role producing a different response to inflation and real-rate conditions.