RIO Technical Analysis, page-11

correct, unheard of, because the bulk of it is concentrated to a few big miners with significant scale. The issue is sub scale small or low grade miners elsewhere in the world often have a cost base circa $US80-100 a tonne. Australia was blessed with large scale high grade deposits that were close proximity to the customer, the only other places on earth are really Brazil and Africa. Brazil - shipping costs, and Africa, well speaks for itself, never took off because they continent is a s%^*hole filled with corrupt directors.

These prices won’t last, but what it does it change their balance sheets yet again. RIO acquired the rest of the Mongolian copper mine, BHP, OZL for copper. 1 year of these prices pays for those acquisitions extinguishes the debt and also funded the large capex spend elsewhere in the portfolio. So essentially lower risks and ups the dividend going forward.

In short, love it.

Elephant in the room is copper… more so BHP than RIO for now, but what if the shortage trade kicks in and we see it to $5 USD a pound? Well, hate to think of the share prices given where iron ore is. I would have thought a copper spike was more likely than iron ore like this. But I’ll take it, iron ore more profitable due to the scale I mentioned above.