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Gold/Mining/Energy : Uranium Stocks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mcbeanburger who wrote (10483)	4/18/2007 4:57:50 AM
From: lowerSharpnose	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 30441

i stand corrected As said the man in the orthopaedic shoes :-) Price forecasts red hot for uranium theglobeandmail.com CIBC World Markets Inc. has raised its price forecasts for uranium oxide by 40 per cent, citing an environmentally driven renaissance in nuclear power and a gap between demand and supply for the metal. The firm's chief economist Jeffrey Rubin said yesterday that he now expects the nuclear fuel, which is currently fetching $113 (U.S.) a pound, to hit $140 this year and $160 in 2008. The move comes amid developments that could bring a new transparency to "yellowcake" prices, which have already risen 15-fold in the past six years, by allowing speculators as well as industry participants to play the market through futures contracts for the first time. Until now, prices have been set behind the scenes, mostly in contracts between utilities and uranium suppliers. As well, it is only in the past couple of years that investors have been able to bet on these prices directly, by investing in a handful of funds that have gone out and purchased actual yellowcake. On Monday, however, the New York Mercantile Exchange revealed plans to launch futures contracts for uranium oxide next month in collaboration with Ux Consulting Co. LLC of Roswell, Ga., the key source of what little public information there is on prices. The contracts will be settled in cash, meaning no one will have to arrange to take delivery of the stuff. The Nymex-Ux plan came just over two weeks after British energy broker Tullett Prebon (UK) Ltd. said it has set up a nuclear fuel derivatives desk to sell a variety of futures contracts -- also to be based on the yellowcake price and settled in cash -- to utilities, mining companies, banks and investment funds. ... Mine production is slated to expand to 59,000 tonnes a year by 2010 from 42,000 last year, with 12,000 tonnes of the increase coming in the final year. However, Mr. Rubin noted in his report that much of the 2010 leap will depend on the timely completion of the currently flooded Cigar Lake mine in northern Saskatchewan that uranium giant Cameco Corp. of Saskatoon is trying to drain and develop. Any slippage will leave the market "significantly tighter." There are mixed views on what sort of impact the addition of futures trading will have on prices. Mr. Rubin said the development "certainly wouldn't cause me to lower my price targets." However, Kevin Bambrough, market strategist at Sprott Asset Management Inc. of Toronto, which has invested aggressively in the uranium sector, said the futures market may siphon off some of the speculative money that has been pumped into buying physical yellowcake. "I think adding liquidity is usually a good thing over all, but I don't expect it to have too much of an impact on the global supply-demand picture, which ultimately will dictate where the price is going to head," he said. ... rgds lowerSharpnose