Base metals were up on Wednesday. Copper climbed 6.44 cents to close at $2.5018/lb. Nickel gained more than 15 cents to finish at $7.2885/lb. Zinc added nearly two pennies, ending at $0.7529/lb. Aluminum rose half a cent, closing at $0.7685/lb., while lead moved to $0.7666/lb., up a penny and three-quarters from the previous session.

Investors bailed out of the equity markets in a big way during Monday’s session on the Canadian Markets. For the tale of the tape, the TSX Exchange plunged 4.41%, while the TSX Gold Index dropped 5.5% and the TSX Venture Exchange, Canada’s largest junior exploration bourse, fell 3.59% with the decliners beating out the advancers by a 632 to 213 margin on a lower than normal 156 million shares traded.

At 53 years of age, John A. Paulson manages about $30 billion in his hedge funds. Over 2007 and 2008, he pocketed $10 billion in profits after he correctly bet that the subprime-mortgage market would crash.  His Credit Opportunities Fund earned nearly 500% gains in that year.

While gold had a big run-up in price during the three-month stretch that ended in late February, the yellow metal has subsequently dropped back a bit, as have the prices of the leading mining shares. If anything, however, the reasons for gold bullishness have intensified.

The base metals were all splashed with red on Friday. Copper cratered during the pre-dawn hours, and was still at its lows after the noon hour, but it staged a late rally that took it back to finish at $1.4519/lb., down only 2 cents.

While the rest of the world is grappling with the global slowdown, China is figuring out ways to exploit it.

The base metals were all slightly higher on Wednesday. Copper fell from the pre-dawn hours to just after the New York open, after which it rose to just past the break-even point, finishing at $1.3679/lb., up a quarter-cent.

Copper prices have fallen off a cliff since June, and not even China’s massive stimulus has bucked the trend. But Sara Nunnally says one Chilean mining firm is still planning a major expansion in production over the coming years. This could mean big profits for the company’s three major financial backers (AAUK, XTA, MITSY)… provided they survive the current commodity slump.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is caught between a rock and a hard place right now. Sure, he would prefer that you focus on “core inflation,” since it excludes sharply rising food and oil prices. But we all have to eat and we all consume energy.

The World Cup scheduled for 2010 in South Africa is showing deep cracks in the country’s economy — positioning investors to reap gains of 129%.