The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) is performing higher this morning, jumping 16.70 points by 10.20am AEDT today (30 January), amid global concerns for rare earth companies following US threats to abandon a price floor.
The bourse has gained 0.95% over the last five days, just setting 1.88% off the 52-week high.
The materials sector is performing higher by 3.66% following the US Government’s intention to abandon price floors for critical minerals projects, removing the Trump administration’s guarantee of a minimum price.
The Trump administration shared that the government was not aligned with mandated floor prices of rare earths companies at a closed-door meeting hosted in Washington earlier this month.
Iluka Resources (ASX:ILU) is seeing the effects of this statement, dropping by 14.08% this morning, though seeing a 401% increase in its 90-day average volume change. Iluka is currently trading at $5.50 per share.
The company is a global critical minerals company that is currently constructing a rare earths refinery to process concentrates from its Eneabba operations in Western Australia, and third parties’ materials.
Lynas Rare Earths (ASX:LYC), which owns the Mt Weld mine in Western Australia is also down 1.153% to a share price of $15.42.
Other resources companies performing lower include energy company Viva Energy (ASX:VEA) and IGO (ASX:IGO).
Top performers include uranium miner Deep Yellow (ASX:DYL), which is up 12.35% to a share price of $2.91, Bellevue Gold (ASX:BGL), which is up 5.85% to $1.99, and NexGen Energy (ASX:NXG), which is up 5.39% to $19.52.
The gold and silver spot prices dropped overnight, losing around $6 trillion in a 30-minute period, not long after gold hit a new record of more than US$5,500 ($7,822) yesterday and silver over US$119, as reported by Mining.com.au.
Gold is currently priced at US$5,412 per ounce and silver is marked at US$117 per ounce as of 11.45am AEDT, according to Trading Economics.
The ASX itself is performing well on the exchange, seeing a 7.46% increase in trading to hold a share price of $57.47.
Write to Maddison Elliott at Mining.com.au
Images: ASX
