James Thompson

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.

Now,

Anthony, a lot of investors here mining mega deals and they want to run for the hills because a lot of money has been blown up in crappy deals in the mining sector in the past.

But do you get the sense that there's a bit of a groundswell amongst the investment community that it's time to have another go at this?

Well, Olivia's certainly planting the seed, isn't she, James?

Yeah, which is the share market index that covers all of the global share markets.

Yeah, good point.

Yeah.

I don't think so.

Olivia Markham was deliberately provocative, I think, and said that on a global sense, in global financial markets, the mining sector is largely irrelevant, quote unquote.

And unfortunately, Australia is...

slightly less relevant to what it once was in the global sector.

So BlackRock's been reducing its exposure in Australian mining shares over the last five years, and that reflects two things.

One is the sort of rising cost levels in Australia.

The other thing is the commodities we produce here.

So obviously iron ore, powerhouse of the Australian industry, hugely profitable.

Coal, another powerhouse, again, pretty profitable.