The base metals were mostly in the red on Tuesday. Copper tumbled during the early part of the New York session, but rallied strongly from there to regain most of the lost ground and finish at $3.7999/lb., down a penny from Friday.

Gold didn’t do a lot on Friday, but silver definitely had a mind of its own. It rose throughout the Far East and Europe, but ran into a not-for-profit seller at 9:00 a.m. New York time.

The base metals were mostly in the red on Wednesday. Copper was erratic, bouncing all over during the day, but ended up sliding somewhat, finishing at $3.8102/lb., down 3 cents.

Alberto Bailleres obviously hopes that 1 and 1 will make not 2, but 3, 4 or even 5! The Mexican billionaire owns the giant diversified mining and chemical group, Penoles. Penoles has floated part of its business on London’s stock market.

Oil soared to yet another record high on Friday after Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) raised its price forecast for the second half of the year.

Over the past several weeks we’ve seen a dip in the price of gold. After reaching and surpassing the $1000 mark in March, gold has eased a bit in light of some conservative Fed forecasting. But does that mean that the crisis is over and gold will be steadily falling? Hardly.

A little less than 12 months ago, the world’s biggest financial players suddenly found they could not turn some $1.3 trillion of their assets into cash.

If you didn’t get a chance to read Saturday’s email, you won’t have seen what my trusted colleague, Manraaj, calls “the biggest growth story of the next 50 years”.

The base metals were down again on Friday. Copper plummeted for a third straight day, dropping from the open to past noon, after which it did bump up at the end to finish at $3.7796/lb., down 6½ cents.

The base metals were mostly in positive territory on Tuesday. Copper revved up after the LME holiday, meandering up and down through about a 4-cent range yesterday, before settling with a nice gain at $3.9316/lb., up nearly 6 cents from Friday.