The base metals took a severe beating on Thursday. Copper was down from the pre-dawn hours straight through the day, only coming off its lows near the noon hour and finishing at $3.497/lb., down 6 cents.

Despite what you read from the financial newsletter industry, there aren’t many secrets left in the mining sector.

The price action in the Aussie share market is starting to look like a pinball game.

What if I told you Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil, BHP Billiton, Chevron and ConocoPhillips have committed more than $100 billion into a new source of energy? You’d definitely want to get involved in the early stages, right?

Is BHP Billiton (ASX: BHP) a serious oil player? Or, let’s put it this way.

Are you getting dizzy yet trying to keep track of all the takeover activity in the Aussie market? From the big fish to the little fish, all of fishes in Australia’s resource ocean are on the Chinese menu.

“Who is the predator and who is the prey? That is what we wonder today.”

“Is China preying on BHP Billiton (ASX: BHP)? Or is BHP preying on Rio? Who are the barracudas and who are the minnows?” asks Dan Denning of the Daily Reckoning Australia.

Steel prices are up by about 10% this year already.

The new story on China and commodities is a lot like the old story on China and commodities. The Australian reports China is eyeing a large stake in the world’s largest diversified commodity producer, BHP Billiton. It’s the latest in China’s enormous effort to lock up iron ore, copper, zinc, oil, and uranium deposits for the next few decades.

It was another quiet but steady day of trading on the Canadian Markets during Wednesday’s session, as surging oil prices and speculation that the Chinese will take down a stake in mining giant BHP Billiton helped fuel resource related stocks.

It seems like just another Monday. But the world always changes a little over the weekend. And this weekend, we reckon it changed a lot. The Opes story dominates the headlines. But the collapse of margin lending and leverage probably isn’t the biggest story this week. It’s the increase in food and energy prices we have our eye on this week.