Gloomy start to September

A market rout on September’s first trading day in the U.S. might be a sign of further carnage to come this fall. For the report period ended Sept. 3, the major indices retested post-9-11 lows, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbling 5.9% to 8,308.05 and the S&P 500 plumetting 6.1% to 878.02 points.

Gold bugs were pleased that the U.S.-listed gold majors were safe havens during the meltdown, even though gold prices hardly budged: Newmont Mining shot up $1.75 to US$29.07; AngloGold rose 39 to US$23.37; Gold Fields surged $1.12 to US$12.39; Ashanti Goldfields advanced 19 to US$5.37; Harmony Gold moved up $1.28 to US$14.60; and Compania de Minas Buenaventura was up $1 to US$26.14.

The silver stocks also were winners, despite silver prices languishing below US$4.50 per oz.: Coeur d’Alene Mines rose 19 to US$2.10; Hecla Mining jumped 44 to US$4.04; and Apex Silver Mines advanced 81 to US$15.

The base metal miners, on the other hand, bore the full brunt of renewed anxiety that American manufacturing is not seeing any substantial recovery from a weak first half year. With prices for copper, zinc and nickel all falling: Alcoa sank $3.18 to US$23.52; Phelps Dodge plummeted $4.18 to US$30.06; BHP Billiton was down 55 to US$9.95; Rio Tinto retreated $5.40 to reach US$69.10; Anglo American dropped $1.04 to end at US$11.85; and Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold crashed $2.47 to US$14.70 as several expats were killed and wounded in an ambush near the company’s Grasberg mine in Indonesia.