The September quarter was split down the middle, with industrial metals prices falling into August on uncertain economic outlooks, before anticipation of US interest rate cuts provided support for both base and precious metals prices as the US dollar weakened. Indeed, the highly awaited US interest rate cut finally materialized in September, while China's subsequent stimulus announcement boosted sentiment further at the end of the quarter.

Intensifying geopolitics and robust demand driven by investors' flight to safety helped push gold prices to record levels but slowing energy transition efforts and uncertainty over global economic conditions have tempered demand expectations for industrial commodities, leaving prices for some metals under pressure, especially battery raw materials. Price pressure in this sector has started to prompt mined supply cutbacks for some operations in higher-cost countries, following on from slowdowns and strategic shifts in related downstream manufacturing. This comes despite many governments increasing policy efforts to support the buildout of new supply chains for critical minerals.

Strong gold prices have failed to materially stimulate an exploration sector long swayed by the precious metal. Although our measure of overall activity levels improved at the end of the quarter, it remained well below year-ago levels, reflecting broad-based commodity-agnostic weakness. This comes despite aggregate market capitalization for our covered companies reaching a multiyear high at the end of the quarter, suggesting investors are more willing to look at the larger players to the detriment of smaller-cap explorers.

Join our analysts as we provide a recap of the September 2024 quarter, provide our near-term outlook and discuss key trends and topics:

• Commodity price trends, drivers and estimates
• M&A and mining financing
• Exploration and development metrics