[Ferro-Alloys.com]BUTTE -- Copper prices bounced up last week due to the presidential election, said an official with Montana Resources, the Butte mine.

Copper and molybdenum, which MR mines at the Continental Pit in Butte, saw a temporary spike after the media called the election for president-elect Donald Trump on Nov. 8. That bumped the price of copper from $2.28 a pound to $2.41 a pound.

Copper prices peaked last Friday at $2.67 a pound.

Molybdenum prices jumped by 12 cents the day after Trump’s election.

Mike McGivern, MR vice president for human resources, attributes the difference between the copper and molybdenum spikes to the size of the molybdenum market. He said “moly” is “a pretty small market” compared to the copper market.

While copper has dropped since Friday — it hovered at $2.47 Tuesday — the price of molybdenum still sits at $6.75 a pound.

“It’s the election,” McGivern said Tuesday from MR’s office. “People are having optimism that they’ll see more economic growth.”

According to MarketWatch.com, copper is widely viewed as a gauge for global economic prospects because it is heavily used in the construction industry.

McGivern also attributed the metals bounce in price to Trump’s proposal to make major infrastructure improvements he said will create “thousands” of jobs.

While the copper and moly pricing improvement is good news for MR, it was a different story at Whitehall’s Golden Sunlight.

Dan Banghart, Golden Sunlight’s general manager, said the price of gold has fallen since the election. It traded at $1,275 an ounce on Nov. 8, and rose slightly, but by Nov. 9, dropped to $1,260. It has fallen since. On Tuesday, gold was trading at $1,223 an ounce — a drop of $52 since Election Day.

Owned by the Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation, Golden Sunlight maintains a small underground gold mine snaking around its open pit north of Whitehall.

A Trump victory was supposed to cause gold to soar, but a stronger dollar has caused gold prices to diminish, according to MarketWatch.com.

On another good news note for the Butte mine, MR employees can expect profit-sharing bonuses in December, McGivern said. The workers did not receive such bonuses last December due to low metals prices, McGivern previously told The Standard.

Copper and molybdenum went into a slump in February 2015 due to a slowdown in China’s economy. At 40 percent, China is the major consumer of copper in the world, McGivern said previously.

The lowest point came in January 2016 when copper dropped to $1.97 a pound and moly dipped to $5.40 a pound.

The stock market and the Dow Jones Industrial Average have also gotten good news since the election. Both have soared since Trump won, according to MarketWatch.com.

• [Editor:Jiang Li Juan ]