Miningweb Weekly: Mining’s surge, gold’s pause and the stocks investors are chasing now

From copper overtaking gold to PGMs roaring back, Peter Major unpacks the forces driving mining’s global outperformance. Plus, why US money is hunting critical minerals, what investors should avoid, and why South Africa risks missing a once-in-a-generation opportunity.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Watch here.Listen here.BizNews Reporter.By the time the mining world descends on Cape Town over the next two weeks, the mood will be unmistakable. Confidence is back. Capital is flowing. And for once, mining is not playing second fiddle to tech or bonds or property. It is leading the pack.Peter Major puts it bluntly. Over the past year, and especially the last six months, mining has beaten almost everything except the hottest AI stocks. Precious metals led the charge, but now the rally is broadening. Copper has quietly outperformed gold for nearly a year. Platinum has doubled in six months. Silver has surged. Even the JSE All Share has outpaced gold over the last 12 months.This is not a speculative blip. It is a structural shift.As Major explains, gold’s rocket phase appears to be ending. Not collapsing, but levelling off. When that happens, the rest of the sector plays catch up. Platinum group metals, copper and silver are beneficiaries of that rotation. The share prices are already telling the story. Several gold miners peaked months ago, even as the gold price pushed higher. Markets anticipate before headlines catch up.That backdrop explains why five separate Mining Indabas are converging on Cape Town in quick succession. Ferroalloys, manganese, coal, producers, investors and dealmakers are all arriving at once. Timing, as Major notes, could hardly be better.Yet while global capital circles the sector, South Africa stands awkwardly on the sidelines.Major draws an uncomfortable parallel with Venezuela. Once rich in oil, now effectively uninvestable. Not because the resources vanished, but because confidence did. Even if political change came overnight, capital would still hesitate. Investors remember nationalisation, rule changes and broken contracts far longer than politicians expect.South Africa, he argues, is not as different as we like to believe.Mining may not have been formally nationalised, but the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act changed ownership in all but name. Minerals were removed from private balance sheets and turned into state-controlled licences, granted temporarily and conditionally. Mines are century-long investments. No serious investor commits capital on 20-year permissions that may or may not be renewed.The result is visible in the numbers. Since the MPRDA, investment has dried up. Deep-level gold mines that once defined global mining excellence are now shadows of themselves. Where South Africa once produced more than 600 tonnes of gold a year, output has collapsed to under 100. That wealth will never be rebuilt.And yet, the irony is stark. At precisely the moment South Africa should be irresistible, it is struggling to get out of its own way.The United States is scrambling to secure critical minerals. China already controls much of the supply chain. Washington has realised too late that paper markets and financial engineering do not build batteries, weapons systems or power grids. Real things matter again.Major notes that US-backed investment vehicles are paying near record prices for long-term supply contracts. Ten-year guarantees. Premium valuations. Strategic money that is not obsessed with short-term return on investment, but with security of supply.This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity.Unlike private capital, the Pentagon does not obsess over quarterly returns. It wants certainty. It wants volume. It wants control. For countries able to offer stable jurisdictions, the chequebooks are open.South Africa should be at the front of that queue.Instead, Pretoria is engaged in verbal skirmishes with Washington, questioning alliances and signalling ideological ambiguity. That posture may play well domestically, but it is poison for capital. As Major puts it, gamblers occasionally get a chance to redeem themselves. This is South Africa’s moment. It will not come again soon.The contrast with other African jurisdictions is telling. The Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia were once regarded as hopeless. Regime change altered that perception. Over the past two decades, tens of billions of dollars have flowed in. Infrastructure was rebuilt. Mining boomed. If they could turn the corner, so could South Africa.But only if the will exists.That theme runs through Major’s critique of domestic mining policy. Political rhetoric about standing up to mining houses has delivered little beyond job losses. Hundreds of thousands of livelihoods disappeared. A globally dominant gold industry was dismantled. No replacement has emerged.Even success stories reveal the damage beneath the surface. Chrome exports are booming, often cited as proof that mining is alive. In reality, chrome is exported raw because local smelters have collapsed. Iron ore faces the same fate. South Africa increasingly sells minerals to competitors rather than beneficiating them at home.Ironically, platinum miners have survived by becoming exceptionally efficient. Years of low prices forced innovation. Chrome recovery from PGM ore is now world class. That diversification has helped balance revenues, but it is not a substitute for policy stability.Major is clear that management quality still matters. He singles out companies like Northam, built patiently through cycles, avoiding overpaying for assets, planning for downside scenarios. Leaders who understand mining is not corporate finance dressed up in hard hats.The danger, he warns, is mistaking short-term price surges for permanent value. Fund managers rotate. Rockets shed stages. The smart money moves before the fuel runs out.The bigger risk lies elsewhere.If South Africa fails to align itself with global capital flows now, particularly in critical minerals, it may miss the last great mining cycle it is structurally capable of exploiting. Political pride will not build shafts. Ideology will not fund processing plants. Only trust does.As the delegates arrive in Cape Town, the question is no longer whether mining is back. It is whether South Africa is willing to meet the moment.Right now, the answer remains uncomfortably uncertain.

Miningweb Weekly: Mining’s surge, gold’s pause and the stocks investors are chasing now

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