(Kitco News) Gold rallied to an all-time high of $3,585 an ounce on Friday, with silver also pushing $41.50 earlier in the week, its highest level in 14 years.
Despite the market’s strong gains, Christopher Ecclestone, Principal and Mining Strategist at Hallgarten & Company, said politics and global tensions, not Federal Reserve policy, remain the key drivers.
“Most of the Trump tariff measures are inflationary. You can’t get around it,” Ecclestone told Kitco Mining’s Digging Deep. While Fed Chair Jerome Powell signaled at Jackson Hole that policymakers are open to a September rate cut, Ecclestone said such a move would not alter the underlying drivers. “It doesn’t take away any of the uncertainty. It doesn’t take away any of the global tensions at the moment.”
Newmont, Barrick, and Agnico Eagle together generated about $10 billion in free cash flow in the second quarter. Ecclestone warned that the sector must manage this carefully. “Big cash piles are building up these gold companies,” he said. “If you can’t buy anything cheap or accretive, then the best thing to do is to give the money back to the shareholders.”
On silver, Ecclestone questioned whether the rally reflects fundamentals, adding that companies were “mining the markets rather than mining the metals,”. He also criticized Washington’s announcement this week of adding silver and lead to its Critical Minerals list, calling it “a joke”.
The pool of acquisition targets is shrinking, he added, noting Pan American Silver’s takeover of MAG Silver. “The $8 billion miners aren’t around that much anymore,” Ecclestone said. He described Guyana as a promising jurisdiction, while Venezuela has “totally missed all these opportunities.”
With the Beaver Creek Precious Metals Summit and the Denver Gold Show approaching, Ecclestone warned that miners should not grow complacent at elevated prices. “It’s like decadence. It’s decadence,” he said.
Watch the full interview with Christopher Ecclestone on Kitco Mining’s Digging Deep above.