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Gold has traded between $1,224 and $1,243 so far today…as of 10:00 am Pacific, bullion is up $8 an ounce at $1,240…Silver has climbed 16 cents to $14.97…Copper is up 3 cents $2.15…Crude Oil has added 29 cents to $34.69 while the U.S. Dollar Index is flat at 98.32…

Agnico Eagle (AEM, TSX) CEO Sean Boyd told Kitco News in an interview yesterday that he sees significant changes in the Gold market taking place. “We were in a market where paper market was dominant. No one was focused on what was happening in the physical markets,” he said.  “But a lot of smart money is turning into Gold.”

Jewelers in India’s commercial capital began an indefinite strike yesterday to try to reverse a plan by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to introduce an excise tax, a 1% levy announced in Monday’s budget…India, of course, is the largest Gold market after China and the stoppage in Mumbai may spread…a 3-week nationwide strike in 2012 was successful in getting Modi’s predecessor, Manmohan Singh, to drop plans for an excise tax on Gold jewelry, although the government prevailed in imposing an import duty…

Fraser Institute Rankings

Australia is now the best investment jurisdiction in the global mining sector, according to the Fraser Institute in its latest popular annual survey…it rated 109 regions in total, and 3 Australian regions made it into the top 10 global ranking with Western Australia coming in 1st place…in Canada, Saskatchewan was once again ranked as the top mining region and came in 2nd place in the global survey…however, only 1 other Canadian jurisdiction cracked the top 10 – Quebec, which we find rather surprising given that province’s continuing regulatory delays and environmental politics…

The institute ranked the U.S. as the 3rd most attractive investment country in the world with 3 regions making into the top 10 list, only slightly behind Canada and Australia…Nevada came in 3rd in the global marketplace…however, it is probably Ireland that saw the biggest jump as it now lays claim to the 4th position, up 10 spots from 2014…rounding out the top 10 are Alaska in 6th place, Northern Territory (in Australia) in 7th, Quebec in 8th, Utah in 9th and South Australia in 10th…the companies that participated in the survey reported exploration spending of $2.2 billion U.S. in 2015 and $2.5 billion U.S. in 2014…click here to view the full Fraser Institute report…

In today’s Morning Musings…

1.  Very interesting updated charts for both the Dow and the TSX…

2.  Moody’s takes a dimmer view of China’s credit rating…

3.  Fresh chart explains the new energy behind Pure Energy Minerals (PE, TSX-V)…

Plus more…to view the rest of today’s Morning Musings, login with your username and password, or click here to gain full access to this and other exclusive BMR content and features…

Gold has traded between $1,226 and $1,249 on this Super Tuesday in U.S. politics…as of 10:00 am Pacific, bullion is down $8 an ounce at $1,230…Silver has fallen 16 cents to $14.73…Copper is up a penny at $2.15…Crude Oil has gained 72 cents to $34.47 while the U.S. Dollar Index has added one-quarter of a point to 98.42…

Lucky plumbers – the owner and operator of a home improvement company in Calgary, and an employee, have found a Gold brick, worth an estimated $50,000 or more, under a tub while ripping apart a bathroom…the cellphone-sized Gold bar is imprinted with a serial number and the stamp of a well-known jeweler…

Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg commented today that he believes commodity markets have hit the bottom and that cuts in spending by the world’s biggest mining companies will have a positive impact on prices going forward…

Bullion completed its best month in 4 years yesterday amid further inflows into Gold-backed exchange-traded funds…New York-listed SPDR Gold Shares saw inflows of nearly 15 tonnes yesterday, taking holdings to their highest since 2014…

Data this morning showed that the Chinese manufacturing shrank more sharply than expected in February, suggesting Beijing will have to ramp up stimulus to avoid a deeper economic slowdown…yesterday’s first batch of a series of economic reports out of the U.S. this week revived concerns about the strength of the U.S. economy, though this morning’s ISM manufacturing report exceeded expectations…

Meanwhile, an influential Federal Reserve official said today that he sees downside risks to his U.S. economic outlook, an assessment that could flag a longer pause than he and his colleagues had earlier signaled in terms of the Fed’s next interest rate hike.  “At this moment, I judge that the balance of risks to my growth and inflation outlooks may be starting to tilt slightly to the downside,” New York Federal Reserve President William Dudley said in remarks prepared for delivery at a conference in China, sponsored jointly by the People’s Bank of China and the New York Fed…of particular concern, he said, are falling inflation expectations, as tracked both by market pricing and more importantly in his view by surveys of households…while so far the declines are not dangerously large, if they fall further they could make it more difficult for the Fed to bring inflation back up to its goal…

How about this – despite all the monetary “stimulus” in the euro zone, annual inflation there is expected to be negative 0.2% in February, down from 0.3% in January, according to a flash estimate yesterday from Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office…no matter how hard they try, central banks around the globe are failing in their efforts to kick-start inflation…

Canada’s Big Mess – Anti-Oil, Climate Change Fanatics At It Again

Another day, more insanity in Carbon Free Canada…the Quebec government, which has been the lucky recipient of billions and billions of dollars in transfer payments from the West over the years (time to put a halt to the “equalization” pipeline), announced this morning that it’s seeking an injunction against the Energy East Pipeline Project…it seems that crazy eastern Canadian environmentalists (there are some out west as well) would rather import increasing amounts of Oil from Saudi Arabia than take Crude from western Canada…go figure…Energy East is a $16 billion project that would carry about 1.1 million barrels of Crude Oil per day from Alberta and Saskatchewan through a 4,600 km-long pipeline to petroleum refineries in the east…if climate change fanatics have their way, this project will never break ground, and Canada will continue to import more Oil from the Middle East in a foolish mission to help “save the planet”…absolute lunacy…time for a common sense revolution in this country…

Gold Seasonality Chart

Over the last 20 years, March has been one of the worst months of the year for Gold…all the more reason to be cognizant of a potential retracement this month of some of the gains that have been racked up since the beginning of the year…conceivably, that could come after a further push to the upside – we’ll see…

Gold has finished positive in March only one-third of the time going back to 1997 as you can see in this seasonality chart…the average decline has been 0.8%, the 3rd-worst performing month behind October (-1.2%) and June (-0.9%)…

In today’s Morning Musings…

1.  We’re not seeing it today but the Venture, importantly, has outperformed the broader markets over the last 3 months…

2.  Crude Oil gains fresh momentum – where to from here?…

3.  Lithium – Pure Energy (PE, TSX-V) edges closer to a breakout along with Nevada Energy Metals (BFF, TSX-V)…

Plus more…to view the rest of today’s Morning Musings, login with your username and password, or click here to gain full access to this and other exclusive BMR content and features…