Weekly Reports | Dec 14 2021
Financial markets around the globe enjoyed swift rebounds last week from the prior week’s omicron scare, but not the uranium spot market.
-Uranium spot price ticks down further
-Volumes continue to dry up
-Utilities sticking to term markets
By Greg Peel
The week before last brought the initial omicron alert from South Africa, sending global financial markets into a tail-spin. With speculative activity having recently shot up in the uranium spot market, it, too, suffered from a risk-off shift.
When Dr Fauci noted that omicron appeared to be less deadly than delta, markets rebounded. But not uranium.
Having fallen -US$2.00 the week before to US$45.00/lb, industry consultant TradeTech’s weekly spot price indicator fell another -US25c last week to US$44.75/lb.
Spot market activity reached record volumes in November, but largely dried up in the week before last and fell further last week, to 550,000lbs U3O8 equivalent in five transactions.
Amid lingering concerns over covid, recent inflation news, and general uncertainty in the global financial markets, notes TradeTech, uranium market participants turned their attention to year-end administrative activity and budgetary and strategic planning for next year.
The market does tend to go quiet heading into year-end.
Share prices for global uranium miners on TradeTech’s watch list fell by an average -6% over the week.
Utilities were absent in the spot market last week. A growing lack of predictability in the spot uranium price has prompted several utilities to pursue mid- or longer-term supply commitments in an effort to provide insulation from price volatility in their term contracting, TradeTech reports.
Utility buyers continue to command slightly lower prices than speculators or intermediaries.
TradeTech’s term price indicators remain at US$44.00/lb (mid) and US$45.00/lb (long).
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