Wealthion Macro Bites 4-21

Russia’s Central Bank reported on Monday that its gold reserves have declined 700koz year-to-date, from 74.8Moz on 1/1/26 to 74.1Moz in early-April. Despite the tonnage decline, the value of Russia’s gold holdings increased from $325B to $334B over the span. The Russian Central Bank started to trim its gold holdings in Nov. ’25 as part of its operations on behalf of Russia’s National Wealth Fund, stating gold’s 2025 price increase prompted the re-diversifying sales.

Reuters reports two of Zambia’s largest copper smelters and sulfuric acid producers (Mopani and Chambishi) will shut for extended maintenance later this year, further squeezing copper output and supplies of the critical chemical used in copper and cobalt production. Copper smelters in Zambia (Africa’s # 2 producer) generate about 2Mt of sulfuric acid per year, but First Quantum’s Zambian Head Anthony Mukutuma said Zambia’s sulfuric acid inventory is so depleted, there remains no export capacity.

Brazilian rare earths miner Serra Verde, which agreed on Monday to be acquired by USA Rare Earth, will receive a 15-year offtake agreement and price floors for its minerals from a consortium of private investors and the U.S. government. The price floors are for the four major rare earths needed to make permanent magnets (neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium), with the contract price for NdPr set @ $110/kg, for dysprosium @ $575/kg and terbium @ $2,050. Serra Verde’s mine is also slated to produce yttrium, although that mineral was not included in the offtake agreement.

Citibank estimates that even if the U.S. and Iran reach a ceasefire agreement this week, global crude and product inventories will decline a total of 900M barrels (500M already & an additional 400M during re-ramp) to their lowest level in 8 years. One additional month of Hormuz disruptions would bring the drawdown to 1.3B barrels, and two months would lift inventory losses to 1.7B barrels, dropping global inventories to their lowest level in 25 years of data.

Kevin Warsh raised eyebrows in prepared remarks for the Senate Banking Committee’s Tuesday review of his Chair nomination in stating that while the Fed must remain “strictly independent” in its “operational conduct of monetary policy,” this degree of independence “does not extend to the full range of its congressionally mandated functions” (such as bank regulation and supervision and stewardship of public monies).

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