The Ukraine war lit a fire under an already hot potash market, coal and uranium benefitted from the ongoing worldwide energy crunch, lithium soared and cobalt bolted. Gold pierced $2,000 but couldn’t hold it and palladium hit a record only to pull back sharply.
Rising tide
Investors made the most of the turmoil with the MINING.COM TOP 50* ranking of the world’s most valuable miners jumping by $335 billion in Q1, extending a trend that has seen valuations balloon nearly 150% since the lows of March-April 2020.
From just over $700 billion at the depth of pandemic slump, the globe’s 50 most valuable mining companies now have a combined worth of $1.75 trillion, handily beating the previous record valuation set mid-2021.
The index received a boost from the merger, closed in February, of constituents Agnico Eagle and Kirkland Lake Gold that created a $30 billion-plus company, but valuations moved sharply higher across…
