Tribeca Partners backs these silver and gold miners as prices surge to record highs

Fund manager Tribeca Investment Partners lifted its bets on the gold sector over the second half of 2024 as the precious metal's price surged to a record high of $US2911 an ounce on Tuesday morning. 

Prices for copper, gold and silver have all extended bull runs early this week, after US President Trump confirmed plans to slap 25 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, with worries the trade shake-up will soon extend to other base and precious metals.

"Gold is suddenly back in the spotlight and everyone is talking about $US3000 an ounce as the next milestone," portfolio manager Todd Warren told a Seed Partnerships lunch in Sydney last week. 
"There’s little industrial use for gold and we spend a lot of money digging it out of the ground just to put it back underground, but that aside it’s a place to hide out in uncertain times and we’re seeing that now with geopolitical or other uncertainties."

The Tribeca Natural Resources Fund held stakes in ASX-listed gold mining giants Newmont Corporation, Genesis Minerals, Northern Star and speculative explorer Spartan Resources as at the end of 2024. 

The Fund also has significant exposure to silver and backs big winners such as Canadian listed Discovery Silver, which has surged 156 per cent over the past year. 

"You can paint an industrial argument for silver and the attractive supply and demand dynamics," Mr Warren said. "It’s one of the biggest commodities needed in solar panels and we do like the silver argument, so we have a decent portfolio exposure and it trades with some correlation to the gold price."

Copper, uranium, green metals

Tribeca's resources team is also bullish on copper and uranium as ways to play the ongoing transition from fossil fuels to clean energy resources for long-term capital gains. 

Last September, mining giant BHP Group forecast copper demand to grow at a rate of 2.6 per cent to 2035 as a key ingredient for the transition to wind, solar and electric power. 

The copper price has surged since President Trump took office on worries over import tariffs, while larger miners such as BHP remain keen to buy junior producers, rather than invest in developing new mines. 

“Copper is a big part of our portfolio," said Mr Warren. "Our portfolio is global and focusing on companies with a growth portfolio and with those assets the big guys want  We’ve touched on that buy versus build aspect and with copper we think it runs true.
"We also focus on aluminium. It’s actually tied at the hip to the copper thesis and there’s an awful lot of aluminium that needs to go into the power transmission."

Some of the Tribeca Resources' fund's bigger bets on copper and aluminium include Canadian mining giant Teck Resources, Alcoa and Capstone Copper. 

The fund has around 25 per cent of the fund's asset in assets exposed to growing demand for nuclear power as governments - including the US, China, UK, and Japan turn to the base load power source of electricity.