James Thompson

To get a little glimpse of how it works was absolutely fascinating.

Was it hot?

No, we were very lucky.

We were there in perfect conditions, you know.

It was actually a little chilly to start the day and then the sun came out and you thought, oh, how nice is this?

And everyone quickly told us about the days where it gets to 45 degrees and you're on a 12-hour shift.

Oh, man.

They earn their money.

That's absolutely for sure.

Anthony, let's get back to the big story about mining.

One of the stars of the summit was Olivia Markham, who grew up in Perth and now manages about $10 billion US in mining funds at BlackRock.

And her message was quite nuanced.

She's never been more excited about investing in mining.

And that's, as you said, due to all this massive demand for commodities that are part of the AI boom and the energy transition, even the defense spending boom that's going on around the world.

But

Interestingly, her view was that some mining companies are too small to grab the attention of generalist investors, particularly in the US.

And those generalist investors are, every day they're dealing with companies like Nvidia and Amazon and Apple.

It's a trillion dollar companies.

The biggest miners in the world, they're a couple of hundred billion dollars, which is still very big, but it's not enough to grab the attention of those generalists.

So her view is that it may be time for some mining mega deals.