“Don’t panic. The worst thing you can do now is crystalise a loss,” says Andrew Baxter.

Baxter is an investment advisor, educator, author, and regular HotCopper commentator. In this interview, he discusses what’s been happening in markets this week – and how to handle the volatility as an investor.

We explore whether it might be time to buy the likes of CBA (ASX:CBA), BHP Group (ASX:BHP), Santos (ASX:STO), and Woodside (ASX:WDS).

Baxter also talks about Australia’s underlying inflation issues, the cost of living crisis, and what Trump’s tariffs might mean for interest rates.

For more info about Andrew Baxter’s Money and Investing series you can go to his regular podcast; read The Wealth Playbook: Your Ultimate Guide to Financial Security and The Wealth Playbook on Audible.

Join the discussion: See what’s trending right now on Australia’s largest stock forum and be part of the conversations that move the markets.

Disclaimer: Wealth Magnet Pty Ltd (ABN 52 618 868 830) trading as Australian Investment Education is a Corporate Authorised Representative (CAR no. 1255231) of Grange Financial Services Pty Ltd (AFSL No. 488609).

The material provided in this article is for information only and should not be treated as investment advice. Viewers are encouraged to conduct their own research and consult with a certified financial advisor before making any investment decisions. For full disclaimer information, please click here.

Listen to the HotCopper podcast for in-depth discussions and insights on all the biggest headlines from throughout the week. On Spotify, Apple, and more.

Magnum will buy the Parker Gold Project in Western Arizona, which has been “recognised for large tonnage copper and gold potential.”

Surface rock samples revealed up to 83.87 grams per tonne of gold, 359g/t of silver, 8.37% copper, and 16.1% lead, with visible gold spotted in some samples.

The project is in a district already hosting gold and copper producers – but no modern exploration has been done on its prospects.

“While records are sparse and production poorly defined, ores delivered to the smelter during a second phase of mining in 1941-42 held approximately 6 to 7 grams per tonne of gold and 2.3% copper,” the company told investors today.

“The Parker Gold Project has promising exploration potential for gold-copper discovery.

“Crucially, recognition of the possible presence of an IOCG [iron oxide copper gold] mineralisation model opens up the tonnage potential in the area.”

MGU will also be acquiring the Mormon Canyon copper, gold and silver project in north-eastern Idaho, which has more than 4km of strike length with minimal past drilling.

The project has drill-ready targets and historical grades of up to 3.32g/t gold and 4.72% copper. The company says there are 4.4 square kilometres of untested vein systems and Mormon Canyon is close to critical infrastructure.

The Parker and Mormon Canyon projects will cost Magnum $200,000, divided into four equal instalments to Monomatapa. MGU has already started due diligence with a field program to confirm and expand historic exploration.

Magnum will also acquire 100% of EV Resources Inc., which holds the La Cienega Gold Project in La Paz County, Arizona. This project is in the Buckskin Mountains; old copper mine workings and several outcrops have been documented on a mineralised trend covering a 2.5km strike.

The cost is a 2% net smelter return royalty to EVR for minerals produced from the La Cienega Gold Project in the U.S.

In other company updates, Magnum claims U.S. tariff risks spur renewed interest in Magnum’s Buena Vista Magnetite Iron Project in Nevada.

“The speculated imposition of import tariffs being applied to U.S. mineral imports has triggered a renewed interest in domestic mineral resources,” the company told investors.

“Magnum is investigating strategies that may capitalise on this appetite for home-sourced commodities. These include, but are not limited to project proposal realignments, possible consolidation plays, and joint venture opportunities.”

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Elsewhere, Magnum is continuing due diligence around its green iron Hismelt project in Saudi Arabia and is completing due diligence for a proposed acquisition of the Azimuth and Palmares REE projects in Brazil.

Join the discussion: See what HotCopper users are saying about Magnum Mining & Exploration and be part of the conversations that move the markets.

The material provided in this article is for information only and should not be treated as investment advice. Viewers are encouraged to conduct their own research and consult with a certified financial advisor before making any investment decisions. For full disclaimer information, please click here.

Rhetoric accompanying these levy threats has been equally uncompromising, with many leaders finding themselves the target of a Trumpian talking-to about how their country may have exploited the goodwill of the U.S. and its economy.

On Wednesday (U.S. time), it was the turn of Irish taoiseach Micheal Martin – meeting Trump and his deputy J D Vance for the annual meeting before St Patrick’s Day – who was scolded about Ireland snapping up American pharmaceutical companies.

Similarly, Australia has recently been accused – this time by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick – of apparently “dumping” excess aluminium on the U.S. market. This is being used as the justification for 25% tariffs hitting imports of the metal, in addition to steel, which rolled out in Week 11.

But perhaps the most standout (and head-scratching) example is the U.S.’s northern neighbour, Canada, which is being slapped with the same 25% tariffs on its steel and aluminium production as well as an across-the-board levy (another 25%) on all Canadian goods flowing into the U.S.

The latter was announced almost as soon as Trump came into office, with the President saying he would be targeting Canada and Mexico jointly in response to drugs – particularly fentanyl – coming into the U.S. from north and south.

Of course, this garnered a reaction, plus a series of retaliatory actions which indicated the economic and political relationship between the countries was souring.

On March 10, Ontario Governor Doug Ford announced electricity normally flowing from the province into three U.S. states – Michigan, Minnesota, and New York – would be hit with a 25% surcharge to answer Trump’s metals tariffs.

This prompted a threat by the President to push the latter to 50%, before a compromise was eventually reached between Ford and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that will facilitate a rollback of the electricity charges. Levies of 25% against Canadian metals still went ahead on Wednesday, March 12.

The previous day, Trump suggested the best way to resolve the issue would be for Canada to become the 51st state. “This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear,” he said.

It’s difficult to overstate how irrational Trump’s approach seems to be – not only his threats against the Canadian economy, but also the language wrapping it – given the integrated relations between the two in previous years.

Energy is a great place to start, with Canada and the U.S. being each other’s largest trade partner in this sector, among which is an established, nearly century-long trade in electricity underpinned by an integrated grid.

In the past two decades, reliance has been increasingly one-way, with the U.S. importing more electricity than it exports; this affects 22 states. According to Canadian nonprofit media organization Narwhal, the province of Ontario is responsible for providing $700 million worth of electricity – that is, power to 1.5 billion homes.

Professor Wesley Widmaier – from Australian National University (ANU)’s Department of International Relations – believes the tensions between the two can be compared to a personal relationship.

“There are some cases where just like in a relationship, you can say something to your partner where it changes everything,” he said.

“Trump’s ill-considered rhetoric about annexing Canada has affected what could be a lasting change like relations between the two sides, the two people.

“I was just in the U.S., and many Canadians are quite angry and offended, and that affects people where they live.”

Professor Widmeier said Canada was just one country which had been hit with uncertainty over its working relationship with the U.S. going forward.

“In the context of Europe, he’s called Article 5 into doubt by seeming to side with the Russians against Ukrainians on foreign policy,” he said.

“For Australia, I don’t think we’ve reached that point yet, I don’t think he’s engaged in any really egregious rhetoric that would change people’s views of the United States on the ground, so we can play that game of biding and waiting to see to what extent Trump himself pulls away from some of these policies.

“But it’s led to a reconsideration and in some places a deep questioning.”

Certainly, when it comes to Canada, the trade war doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon, with the country promising to match the U.S. “dollar for dollar” in response to the 25% metal tariffs which came in on Wednesday, announcing levies against $30 billion worth of imports from the country – that is, its own 25% tariffs against American steel, computers, and sports equipment.

Professor Widmeier said when it came to geopolitical engagements around defense, Donald Trump had returned to some longstanding preoccupations – particularly that of the U.S.’ allies relying too much on it – but had delivered these very differently.

“Burden sharing has always been an issue between the U.S. and the Europeans: it goes back to the Kennedy administration in the 1960s,” he said.

“What’s different this time – and it goes back to Trump’s statements from his first term – a suggestion that if NATO allies aren’t paying their 2% or whatever the exact amount is, that the US might consider not protecting them.

“It’s taking what was an iron-clad alliance and changing it to something transactional.

“So again, before Trump, if the Russians invaded Lithuania, Estonia, or Latvia, the U.S. – and NATO – would respond quite seriously. You have to think that that might not happen now.”

Professor Widmaier said it was plausible this was what the US President was aiming for long term: Particularly given the support he’d received in states most affected by the free trade, and Chinese dominance in manufacturing.

“Free trade creates winners and losers, protectionism creates winners and losers,” he said.

“To the extent that Trump has a constituency – ‘Build American Manufacturing’ states, the blue wall, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, – they all want to bring those jobs back.

“To the extent that he’s pressuring companies to build factories in the States and that would bring jobs back to the States, it’s not implausible.

“Would that be a rational economic policy? Is that the best allocation of goods and services? No. So there’d be many more losers than there’d be winners.

“The case for free trade is the winners compensate the losers and everyone’s still better off. The problem is for the last 50 years, the losers from free trade have gone pretty uncompensated, and that’s one of the reasons for Trump’s rise.”

Undoubtedly one of the main things to say about Trump’s tariff policy, and the back-and-forth reactions it’s provoked, is that world markets have so far been taking a significant hit thanks to economic uncertainty.

Here in Australia, the ASX200 has experienced four consecutive weekly declines on the back of Trump’s levy threats, and Wall Street has experienced a similar downturn. Professor Widmaier said this would be an issue the President could not ignore.

“I can tell you, when I talk to people back in the United States, stock market swoon has gotten a lot of people’s attention,” he said.

“Americans have their retirement funds tied up in 401K accounts – which are bundles of stock market investments – so when people see the stock market go down, they see their retirement savings go down, and Trump is aware of this.

“And meeting – as he did recently – with the business executives round table, one can imagine this explains a bit of his erratic back and forth kind of reactions.”

The White House has commented that some short-term pain might be necessary for Trump’s trade plan to be realised. And this could be strategic.

“When he’s warning people, when he’s suggesting that a recession is likely, that’s a little more esoteric for people,” Professor Widmaier said.

“And there’s a saying in politics, ‘get your recession out of the way early’.

“Dick Cheney, when the Bush administration back in 2000 took power, Cheney was very quick to declare that the US was likely to head into a recession, because that’s a recession you can blame on the outgoing guy, and 4 years is a long time, so people aren’t going to remember it, they want to get it out of the way.”

He added that while many were talking about the potential impact of tariffs on inflation, there was not likely to be a direct effect, although the instability brought on by constantly shifting policy was something to watch.

“When people say that tariffs are going to cause inflation, I’m sceptical to the extent that these price increases are sector-specific, one-off price increases,” Professor Widmaier said.

“A one-off increase in prices because of a tariff on a particular good – if it doesn’t become embedded in people’s expectations – will not cause prolonged inflation.

“If there are constantly increasing tariffs, where he’s got 25%, then 50%, and cyclical tariffs, and things start to feed on themselves, yes that will be inflationary.”

Join the discussion: See what’s trending right now on Australia’s largest stock forum and be part of the conversations that move the markets.

The material provided in this article is for information only and should not be treated as investment advice. Viewers are encouraged to conduct their own research and consult with a certified financial advisor before making any investment decisions. For full disclaimer information, please click here.

Adding to this is the chatter around our central bank, which has been under pressure to cut rates, but has largely resisted this, choosing instead to keep the cash rate steady at 4.35% – a position it’s held since November 2023.

Reflecting on how the Aussie economy has performed in 2024 – and how it might fare in the following year, given various headwinds including a second Trump administration in the U.S. and a continuing slowdown in China – ANZ senior economist Catherine Birch contributed several thoughts on the outlook.

Starting with the recent GDP numbers, Ms Birch said it showed the impact high inflation has been having on Australia.

“We did see the slowest annual GDP growth in Australia outside of the pandemic, since the 1990s recession, and that does show the economy is really feeling it at the moment,” Ms Birch explained.

“We have seen inflation really be a challenge for the economy. That has certainly caused some challenges for many industries and parts of the economy: construction is a big one in particular.

“We know a lot of construction firms have really struggled with the sharp rise we’ve seen in input costs. And some of the supply disruptions have really constrained how much can really be done, and therefore limiting growth as well.”

In response to high inflation, the RBA had taken a tough line on rate cuts – and had received pushback for this. But Ms Birch said it’s important to remember Australia had differed from other countries in terms of its initial experience with inflation, and how the RBA had chosen to respond to this.

“We saw inflation pick up later, we saw it peak later, but it’s also been slower to come down as well,” she said.

“And one of the differences, not only in the timing of rate changes versus other central banks, is that the RBA took our cash rate to 4.35% – well below a lot of comparable economies.

“For example, over in New Zealand, their OCR peaked at 5.5%, we saw over in the US, the rates peaked at 5.25-5.5% as well.

“So one of the reasons the RBA did that was that they were willing to tolerate a slower return of inflation back to target with the benefit being that unemployment wouldn’t rise as much if they took rates even higher to try and get inflation back to target sooner.”

Indeed, evidence of a consistently resilient labour market in Australia seems to have justified the Reserve Bank’s actions.

Looking into the new year, it was likely that – unexpected data notwithstanding – the RBA’s cautious policy would be likely to continue.

“We’re expecting that the RBA will start to cut rates in May and that there will be only two 25 basis point rate cuts in this cycle – so getting down to 3.85% by August next year, and then staying there,” Ms Birch said.

“A lot of people might not want to hear that sort of forecast. It will depend quite a bit on the data as to when the cuts start.

“If we see inflation and labour market data and household spending becoming weaker than expected over the next couple of months, it’s possible that they may start to cut rates in February.”

Turning to global headwinds in 2025, Ms Birch said the key word guiding predictions for both the Australian dollar and commodity prices was ‘volatility.’

The former would be likely to drop in the first half of the year, influenced by the anticipated impacts of Donald Trump’s promised tariff policy.

“We think that we’ll be seeing, by the middle of 2025, the Aussie dollar at around 63 US cents, but potentially there are periods where it gets lower, closer towards the 60 cents mark,” she said.

However, Ms Birch added several variables would enable Australia’s economy to survive these headwinds, with the dollar moving back towards 67 cents in the second half of 2025.

“We think Australia is still relatively well placed compared to a lot of other economies in terms of our growth outlook, and also our ability to deal with any shocks coming up as well, so that room we have on the fiscal policy side and monetary policy side,” she said.

Geopolitical and global economic volatility would likely also retain the strength of gold as a safe haven, she added, while other commodities would be shaped by trends coming out of Beijing.

“We think about something like lithium – the oversupply in batteries that we’re seeing in China will likely limit the near-term outlook at least, but the longer-term outlook still looks really positive,” Ms Birch said.

“And then of course there’s the China story as well: With that slowdown, that structural weakness that we’re seeing in the property sector only being partly offset by some of the stimulus measures and the move towards those new productive forces.

“So more investment in renewables and things like EVs and green infrastructure. Now, those sorts of things should boost things like aluminium and copper and some supply disruptions in those metals should also protect any price downside.”

Join the discussion: See what’s trending right now on Australia’s largest stock forum and be part of the conversations that move the markets.