Zscaler ($ZS) has reached our price target and we closed it with a huge gain from $125 to $185.

Now to the more interesting and detailed part.

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The paper is, at its core, an economic case for how a Trump administration could rebuild the global trading and monetary system in America’s favour. It got an enormous amount of attention and a fair amount of misreading. So it’s worth going through what it actually says, and then holding it up against what has happened since.

Why Now

Two years on, the paper is worth rereading for one reason above all. The piece of Miran’s plan that never got built is exactly the piece now under visible stress: the demand side of the Treasury market.

On 13 August 2026 the Treasury sold $25 billion of 30-year bonds at 5.216%, the highest auction yield since 2001. The bid-to-cover ratio slipped to 2.39 and the stop cleared above the when-issued level, meaning demand came in softer than expected. The day before, the 10-year auction drew the highest financing cost since 2007. By 17 August the long bond was trading at 5.29% in the secondary market, the highest since 2007, and the 10-year had spent most of the previous month above 4.6%.

Meanwhile the cost of carrying the debt keeps compounding. Interest on the public debt has already passed $1.17 trillion ten months into fiscal 2026, and total debt is closing in on $40 trillion.

Here is the detail that should get your attention. Those yields rose even as the pressure on the Fed to hike was easing. Underlying inflation came in softer, and the July employment report showed employers cutting jobs. Long rates went up anyway. That is not a growth story. It is a supply and risk premium story, and neutralising exactly that mechanism was the entire point of Miran’s plan.

Part 1: The Argument

The Core Claim

Miran’s starting point is that America’s real problem is not primarily that other countries “export too much.” It’s that the US dollar, as the world’s reserve currency, is structurally too expensive.

The world needs dollars and US Treasuries as reserve assets. That creates demand for USD and Treasuries which is close to price-inelastic. People buy them because they have to, not because they’ve run the numbers on relative value. And that keeps the dollar stronger than it would be if it only had to clear US trade flows.

The consequences follow mechanically:

• US imports get cheap

• US exports get expensive

• US industry loses competitiveness

• Trade deficits become permanent

• And the US has to keep supplying the world with safe dollar assets anyway

This is what Miran calls the “Triffin world.”

1. The Dollar Paradox

Reserve currency status brings the US enormous advantages:

Upside

• Financial leverage over the entire global system

• Sanctions and exclusion from SWIFT or the US financial system as a geopolitical weapon

• Deep, permanent demand for Treasuries

• Real geopolitical power

Downside

• The dollar is structurally overvalued

• US production becomes less competitive

• Trade deficits become chronic

• Industrial capacity erodes

Which leaves a central trade-off: a strong dollar buys you more geopolitical and financial power, at the cost of a weaker industrial base.

2. The Toolkit

The toolkit comes down to two levers, tariffs and currency policy. Tariffs are the blunter and more familiar one, something like 60% on Chinese imports plus a 10% universal tariff.

The interesting claim in the paper is that tariffs need not be strongly inflationary.

Why not? Because if a country responds to a US tariff by letting its currency depreciate, the currency move can offset part or all of the tariff. Simplified:

10% tariff + 10% currency depreciation ≈ no change in the dollar import price.

Miran argues this is roughly what happened in 2018 and 2019. The renminbi fell sharply against the dollar and, in his reading, absorbed a large share of the tariff increase.

3. Who Pays the Tariff

Incidence, meaning who actually ends up bearing the cost, is where the paper does its sharpest work.

If the tariff is fully offset by currency depreciation:

• The US consumer pays roughly the same dollar price

• The foreign country sees its currency lose value

• The US Treasury collects the tariff revenue

Which is how Miran gets to his conclusion: part of the cost of running the dollar system could be pushed onto foreign reserve holders and trading partners.

If there is no currency offset, the opposite happens:

• US import prices rise

• US consumers pay

• Supply chains get rebuilt

• Some production relocates to the US

• And tariff revenue eventually declines, because imports decline

4. The Bigger Plan: Devaluation

Here the paper gets more ambitious.

Miran’s point is that Trump doesn’t need to destroy the dollar’s reserve status. Instead, the US could try to engineer a controlled devaluation while ensuring the world keeps holding Treasuries.

That would be the optimal combination:

• A weaker dollar, so US industry becomes competitive again

• Continued reserve currency status, so the US keeps its geopolitical power

5. The Mar-a-Lago Accord

This is the part that made the paper famous, and it’s the most investment-relevant idea in it.

The concept: the US persuades large foreign Treasury holders to shift out of short-dated US government debt and into extremely long-dated paper, up to 100-year bonds, so-called century bonds. Wall Street promptly gave the idea a name, the Mar-a-Lago Accord, and spent much of 2025 debating it.

If it worked, you’d get:

Dollar down, so US exports get cheaper, US industry gets more competitive, and demand rotates toward the US.

While simultaneously: foreign central banks keep their Treasuries, so there is no mass liquidation, less upward pressure on US rates, and refinancing stays manageable.

That is the core of the idea.

6. Carrot and Stick

No government signs up to a deal like that voluntarily, so the paper pairs a threat with an incentive.

The stick: tariffs. Don’t cooperate, and your export sector pays for it.

The carrot: the US security guarantee. Stay inside the American-led economic and security architecture and you get better terms.

Miran is effectively proposing to bundle trade, the dollar, Treasury holdings and NATO-style security into a single negotiation. That would be a fundamental change to how the global financial system works.

7. Why China Matters

The paper puts Chinese official FX reserves at roughly $3 trillion and Japan’s at roughly $1.2 trillion, on top of large holdings across other Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Those are total reserves in every currency and instrument, not Treasury holdings alone, but they are the pool any coordinated deal would have to move.

Which means that if the US genuinely tried to weaken the dollar, it would have to prevent China and others from simply dumping US assets.

Because dollar devaluation plus Treasury selling gives you all of the following at once:

• USD down

• Treasury prices down

• Treasury yields up

• US financing conditions deteriorate

• Equity markets come under pressure

That’s exactly why the long-duration rollover is the load-bearing piece of the plan.

8. The Real Danger: Volatility

Miran says explicitly that the biggest risk isn’t necessarily inflation. It’s financial market volatility. A large currency move can hit markets far harder than a one-off increase in the price level from tariffs.

His example: the yen carry trade unwind in 2024, when a violent deleveraging took the Nasdaq down roughly 8% in three sessions. He argues an extreme renminbi devaluation could be worse still, because China carries very high debt levels and operates capital controls.

9. Equities

The paper is not straightforwardly bearish on stocks. Quite the opposite.

If the reform is executed well, with deregulation, cheaper energy, lower inflation and higher productivity growth, Miran’s framework points to higher growth, higher equity prices, lower inflation and eventually a more stable bond market.

The problem is the transition. A chaotic implementation gives you the ugly version: sharply lower USD, higher Treasury yields and elevated volatility.

10. Asset by Asset

Pull all of that together and the paper implies a reasonably clear directional map.

The paper’s own directional map. Scenarios, not forecasts.

These are scenarios drawn from the paper, not forecasts.

In One Sentence

If the whole 41 pages had to collapse into a single line, it would be this.

Trump could try to weaken the dollar in a controlled way while getting the rest of the world to keep holding its US Treasury reserves, financed by tariffs and underwritten by the American security guarantee.

The goal: dollar down, US industry up, trade deficit down, more domestic production, while the dollar stays the reserve currency and US financial power stays intact.

Miran isn’t proposing a break with the dollar system. He’s proposing a renegotiation of the terms on which the rest of the world gets to benefit from the dollar and the American security umbrella. That’s why the paper matters to equity, currency and rates investors. It doesn’t just describe a tariff policy, it describes a possible new global financial architecture.

Part 2: Paper vs. Reality

In hindsight the paper is remarkably relevant, but events have not unfolded the way Miran sketched them.

The headline: the US has implemented a large chunk of the strategy, with aggressive tariffs and sustained pressure on trading partners, but the second step, a coordinated Mar-a-Lago-style dollar devaluation, has not materialised.

Where Miran’s 2024 blueprint matched what actually happened, and where it did not.

1. Tariffs: Broadly Right

This is the part of the paper that most clearly materialised.

Trump went considerably harder in 2025 than the paper’s baseline scenarios. Broad tariffs were announced on “Liberation Day,” and the effective rate on China spiked at one point to 125%.

The legal foundation then changed, but the policy didn’t. After the Supreme Court curtailed the use of emergency powers for tariffs in early 2026, the administration rebuilt the programme on other authorities. The temporary Section 122 global surcharge expired on 23 July 2026 and was replaced overnight by Section 301 tariffs on 60 economies at 10% or 12.5%, justified by forced-labour enforcement failures, with net-of-MFN caps for a handful of partners including the EU, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Switzerland.

That fits Miran’s thesis neatly. Tariffs are not just a tax, they’re a negotiating instrument, and he explicitly proposed graduated escalation to extract concessions. What the 2026 version adds is durability: unlike the emergency tariffs, a Section 301 action has no obvious expiry date.

2. Reshoring in Practice: Rare Earths

If you want a concrete example of the “bring production home” half of the strategy, don’t look at consumer goods. Look at critical minerals.

China refines the overwhelming majority of the world’s rare earth elements, roughly 90% of processing capacity, along with dominant shares of cobalt, graphite and lithium refining. The US depends on China as primary supplier for around half of the 50 minerals the USGS classifies as critical. When Beijing imposed export controls on rare earths and magnets during the trade war, it demonstrated that the leverage runs in both directions.

The American response went far beyond tariffs. In July 2025 the Department of Defense took a $400 million equity stake in MP Materials, operator of the Mountain Pass mine in California and the only commercially viable rare earth mining and processing site in the country. That made the US government the company’s largest shareholder. The package also included a loan, a guaranteed floor price for its main output, and a commitment that magnets from a new plant would be bought by defence or commercial customers.

It didn’t stop there. Between January 2025 and June 2026 the federal government put roughly $10 billion into the critical minerals sector, taking equity in several miners along the way. A July 2026 executive order further restricted defence contractors from sourcing material from adversaries. And the administration has since floated minimum import prices for certain critical minerals, while lawmakers proposed a dedicated $2.5 billion agency to fund domestic production.

Three things follow from this, and they matter for the whole thesis.

First, it confirms Miran’s bundling of trade and national security. He argued tariffs would be applied in ways deeply entangled with security policy. Rare earths are the purest version of that: the tariff is only one instrument alongside state equity, offtake guarantees and procurement rules.

Second, it goes well beyond what the paper described. It’s direct industrial policy, with the government picking a national champion and underwriting its price. Whatever you think of it, it’s a bigger break with orthodoxy than anything in the User’s Guide.

Third, it argues against the low-inflation claim. A guaranteed floor price above the world price is, by construction, a higher input cost. Reshoring a supply chain that China dominates on cost cannot be disinflationary. It buys resilience and pays for it in margin or in price. Magnets for an F-35, an EV motor, a wind turbine or a drone get more expensive; the risk of a Chinese export ban shutting down the production line goes down. That is a defensible trade, but it is a trade, not a free lunch.

For investors there’s a fourth point. An entire domestic complex now exists whose economics rest on policy staying in place. That’s political risk, not commodity-cycle risk, and it prices very differently.

3. The Dollar: Off Script

The currency leg of the story is where theory and tape part company.

The clean version of the theory says tariffs lead to foreign currency depreciation, so the dollar holds or strengthens. Or, with an explicit currency strategy, the US chooses a weaker dollar and manages it down.

What 2025 delivered was something else entirely: a loss of confidence in the dollar.

In April 2025, during the tariff panic, the dollar fell hard while Treasuries also came under pressure. The move was severe enough to be described at the time as a possible dollar crisis. Over the full year the dollar lost roughly 10%, its worst year since 2017.

That’s a meaningful difference from Miran’s clean theoretical scenario. He wanted a controlled currency adjustment. What partly arrived instead was an uncontrolled loss of confidence in US assets.

4. The Risk He Flagged

The paper is explicit that the more dangerous effect of a currency adjustment is market volatility rather than inflation. That’s precisely what 2025 delivered.

The unusual part was the combination: USD down and Treasuries down at the same time. Under normal stress conditions, investors run toward dollars and Treasuries. In 2025 that reflex repeatedly failed, with heavy selling in both.

This matters enormously for the theory. Miran’s ideal scenario requires the dollar to fall while the Treasury market stays stable. That separation did not hold reliably.

5. No Accord

This is the biggest gap between paper and reality.

The idea was that foreign central banks would keep their US reserves but massively extend duration, potentially out to century bonds, giving America a weaker dollar, lower long-end risk and continued global Treasury demand all at once.

There has been no such international currency or Treasury deal. As early as March 2025 it was being reported that there was no sign the administration was actually pursuing one, and Miran himself said at the time that the 2024 paper was not a secret policy programme.

That distinction is important. The idea captured a huge amount of attention. It never became a Bretton Woods style agreement.

6. Bessent’s Different Line

There is also a personnel explanation for why the paper never translated one to one into policy.

Miran argues for a deliberate change to the currency system. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been publicly far more cautious, emphasising a strong dollar and declining to question dollar dominance in any fundamental way.

Actual policy therefore looks more like tariffs, negotiations, deregulation, energy policy and pressure on trading partners, rather than a formal global currency deal.

7. Inflation: Partly Right

The paper argued that a 10% tariff doesn’t automatically mean 10% more inflation, because currency moves absorb some of it.

Inflation did not explode. But it also hasn’t gone away. US CPI ran at 3.4% in July 2026, with core CPI at 2.5%. Fitch explicitly names higher tariffs as a driver of elevated goods inflation and expects roughly 3.4% average inflation for 2026.

So: directionally right. But “tariffs are almost non-inflationary” was too optimistic as a general statement, and the critical minerals build-out described above pushes in the other direction.

8. The Treasury Problem

Here one of the paper’s key risk points has been confirmed, in its unfavourable version.

Miran wanted to avoid a situation where dollar weakness triggers a Treasury sell-off. In 2026, US long-end yields are at quarter-century highs at auction, with persistent concerns about deficits and long-run inflation.

And the fiscal picture keeps deteriorating. The July 2026 monthly deficit came in at $432 billion, with the fiscal-year-to-date deficit already at $1.799 trillion.

That is exactly the problem Miran wanted to address by restructuring the Treasury holder base. It remains unsolved.

9. The 2026 Reversal

The following year complicated the story again, in the other direction.

After the 2025 collapse, the dollar stabilised in 2026 and actually gained around 1.6% in the first quarter, with the safe-haven function reasserting itself. The dollar index currently sits around 100.

So the sequence looks like this:

• 2025: Trump policy, confidence in USD and US assets falls

• 2026: geopolitical risk plus safe-haven demand, USD rises

In other words, the opposite of a clean, controlled devaluation.

10. Two Strategies

The paper actually contains two distinct strategies.

Strategy A, largely implemented: Tariffs, negotiating leverage, supply chain shifts, strengthen US industry. Rare earths are the flagship case.

That is running.

Strategy B, not implemented: Tariffs, currency deal, dollar down, foreign central banks holding ultra-long Treasuries, US rates stable, new global monetary system.

That remains theory.

Scorecard

Grading the paper claim by claim, this is roughly where I land.

• Tariff strategy: 9/10, accurate

• Diagnosis of the dollar problem: 7 to 8/10

• Predicting a dollar devaluation: 6/10

• Mar-a-Lago Accord as actual policy: 2/10

• Predicting financial market volatility: 9/10

• Predicting a smoother, less inflationary tariff regime: 5 to 6/10

The interesting question for an investor is no longer “is the Mar-a-Lago Accord coming?” It’s this:

What happens if the US keeps using tariffs, cannot devalue the dollar in a controlled way, and the deficit stays enormous?

That combination, big deficits, high Treasury yields, political pressure on the Fed and an unstable dollar, is considerably more dangerous for US bonds than for US equities. Current data already show the long end staying under pressure even as near-term inflation worries ease.

For anyone holding US growth stocks, the key question is whether this ends in structurally higher long-term rates, or in the deregulation plus weaker dollar plus falling inflation combination. Those are two completely different regimes for growth equities.

Part 3: What Comes Next

That leaves four questions I keep coming back to, and they are best treated as one connected system: Trump and tariffs, then the dollar, then Treasury demand, then US rates, then the yen carry trade, and finally global risk assets.

Trump’s Next Moves

Three moves look most likely from here, in descending order of probability.

1. More trade negotiations and targeted tariffs. By far the most likely path. With the emergency route closed, the administration has settled on Sections 301 and 232, and July’s action showed the template: broad coverage, moderate headline rates, a legal rationale that survives challenge, and exemptions available to countries willing to deal.

I would not expect a sudden new 100% tariff shock. Expect tariffs as a permanent negotiating instrument, sectoral tariffs, and exemptions traded for concessions. Which fits Miran’s original idea surprisingly well.

2. Continued heavy pressure on the Fed. Trump will keep pushing for lower short-term rates. The problem is that the Fed can cut the funds rate but cannot decree that the 10-year falls. And right now the combination is exactly wrong for the administration: policy rate down, long yield up. The Fed is currently at 3.50% to 3.75% while the market prices some chance of a hike in September, with inflation at 3.4% in July.

3. An attempt to stabilise the long end. This is the more interesting one. With the 30-year above 5.2% and auction demand thinning, financing the US government is becoming genuinely uncomfortable. So I’d expect more pressure on the Fed, Treasury market measures such as changes to issuance mix, and quiet conversations with large foreign holders, rather than a direct attempt at a large dollar devaluation.

The Yen Carry Trade

High US long-end yields really are a threat to the carry trade, but not for the reason usually given.

It isn’t simply “the 10-year is high, therefore the carry trade is dangerous.” What matters is the rate differential between the US and Japan, plus the expected currency move.

Right now: US 10-year around 4.7%, Japanese 10-year around 2.88%.

But the carry trade is usually funded short-term, not by buying 10-year Treasuries. The classic version is: borrow yen, sell yen, buy dollars, buy a US asset, earn the spread. As long as USD/JPY rises or holds steady, that’s extremely attractive.

The danger is the yen itself. If USD/JPY falls from, say, 160 to 145, the carry trader loses roughly 9% on the currency leg, which wipes out an entire year of carry.

Which is why the current setup is delicate. At the end of July the US Treasury bought yen alongside Tokyo, its first yen-buying intervention with Japan in more than a decade, after the pair approached 164, its weakest since the 1980s. USD/JPY dropped to roughly 158 within the hour, then recovered toward 160 within days. The BOJ held its policy rate at 1% on 31 July, with one board member already voting for more.

So the carry trade is still alive. But policy risk has gone up sharply, and breaking a crowded trade turns out to be far easier than reversing what made it crowded.

The Shrinking Spread

Japanese 10-year yields are now at 2.88%, roughly 1.3 percentage points higher than a year ago. That changes the arithmetic completely.

Before: Japan at 0% to 1%, US at 4% to 5%, an outstanding carry. Now: Japan at about 2.9%, US at about 4.7%, a spread of only about 1.8 points.

And if the BOJ keeps normalising, toward 3%, then 3.5%, then 4%, the trade becomes progressively less attractive. In my view this is one of the most important global macro risks for 2026 and 2027.

Why Yields Are High

Long rates get blamed for recessions more often than they cause them. A 4.7% 10-year does not by itself tip the economy over. What matters much more is why the yield is that high, and right now there are three answers.

Inflation. CPI at 3.4%, core at 2.5%. The Fed can’t cut aggressively into that.

Supply. The US has to finance enormous deficits. More Treasury supply means investors must absorb more paper, which pushes prices down and yields up. This is one of the most important structural drivers, and the thin auction demand in August is the clearest evidence of it.

Term premium. In my view the key factor. Investors are saying that if they’re holding US government debt for 10 or 30 years, they want compensation for inflation risk, fiscal risk, political uncertainty and duration risk. The 10-year term premium sat around 0.83% in early August.

Which means the high 10-year yield isn’t mainly a statement about expected Fed policy. A substantial part of it is simply the price of holding long-term risk.

Fiscal Stagflation Risk

The genuinely dangerous configuration is the one that breaks the usual sequence.

Normally the sequence runs: economy weakens, Fed cuts, 10-year falls.

But the current configuration allows something else. The economy weakens while the deficit grows, Treasury supply grows, inflation risk persists and the term premium expands, and the 10-year stays high or rises anyway. August 2026 was a live demonstration: softer inflation data, negative payrolls, and long yields at 19-year highs in the same week.

Call it fiscal stagflation risk. Brookings described exactly this unusual decoupling back in 2025, with the 10-year rising despite softening economic data.

Recession Odds

On the current data, a recession is not my base case, and the evidence is genuinely mixed.

Negative: weaker employment data, high long-term rates, sticky inflation, geopolitical risk, enormous deficits.

Positive: consumption is holding up, investment is relatively strong, equity markets are robust, and the Fed still has room to respond to a genuine downturn.

Most bond strategists currently expect 10-year yields to fall over the next twelve months, toward roughly 4.34%, although conviction in that call has been weakening.

My base case is not a classic recession. It’s a slowdown with high long-term rates and elevated volatility. A real recession becomes much more likely if we get unemployment rising, consumption falling, credit tightening and Treasury yields staying above 4.5% to 5% at the same time. That combination would be dangerous.

Foreign Demand

One claim gets repeated constantly at the moment, and it does not survive contact with the data: that foreigners are dumping Treasuries.

“Foreign Treasury demand is weaker” and “foreigners are selling Treasuries” are two very different statements. The second one isn’t true.

The official Treasury data for May 2026:

• Japan: $1.143 trillion

• China: $659 billion

• UK: $949 billion

Japan dropped sharply from April, from $1.210 trillion to $1.143 trillion, around $67 billion in a single month. China went the other way, from $651 billion to $659 billion, an increase of $8 billion.

And in aggregate, foreign Treasury holdings have not collapsed. March 2026 brought a visible drop in Japanese and Chinese holdings, yet the total still came in above $9.3 trillion and roughly 3% higher than a year earlier. April edged higher again. The aggregate has been grinding upward, not falling apart.

So there is no global Treasury exit. What is changing is the composition of Treasury demand.

The Structural Shift

It helps to put the old and the new arrangement side by side.

Old regime

China, Japan and other central banks buy Treasuries, yields stay low, and the US finances huge deficits cheaply.

New regime

Japan partly selling and repatriating. China gradually reducing its dependence. US private investors absorbing more of the supply. Money market funds buying the front end. Pension funds and insurers buying the long end, but demanding more yield to do it.

The result: 10-year and 30-year yields up.

Which closes the loop back to Miran.

His plan: dollar down, foreign central banks keep Treasuries, duration extended to ultra-long, so the US weakens the dollar without breaking the Treasury market.

What 2026 actually delivered: dollar down temporarily, foreign holders partly reduced, Japanese demand structurally more problematic, deficit up, term premium up, long yields up.

Not the ideal Miran scenario.

My Macro View

Putting all of it together, this is how I weight the next eighteen months.

How I weight the 2026 to 2027 scenarios today.

The biggest risk right now isn’t an ordinary recession. It’s the carry-trade-plus-Treasury combination:

Japanese rates rise, the yen strengthens, the yen carry trade gets closed, investors sell global risk assets, and meanwhile US Treasury supply stays high, so long yields don’t fall the way they normally would in a downturn.

That’s the scenario where equities, crypto and other risk assets come under pressure simultaneously, even as the Fed is trying to ease.

Which is why, at the moment, I’d watch USD/JPY, the JGB 10-year, the US 10-year and Treasury auction results far more closely than the S&P 500.

This is analysis and opinion, not investment advice. Figures cited reflect data available as of mid-August 2026.

The Zscaler ($ZS) thesis is playing out nicely, with the market finally catching on. Verra Mobility ($VRRM) is still in action and holding its ground. I’m also adding a few fresh names to the watchlist this time, early-stage plays with the asymmetrical upside I’m always after.

If you want more rebound plays like $NOW and $ZS, consider subscribing for just $29 per month.

Read more

There were also several quick wins from turnaround-style positions, especially stocks like Zscaler and , where the market started to reprice the rebound faster than expected. Rubrik and a few other newer positions also added nicely to the overall performance.

Overall, the portfolio is in much better shape now. The mix of a successful high-risk moonshot, strong SaaS recovery, and smaller tactical turnaround gains helped offset weaker areas and pushed the portfolio back into a much stronger position.

Let’s get straight into it.
This time, we will keep it simple and post just the percentage changes.

If you want to see more early-stage plays with asymmetrical upside like and $NOW, consider subscribing for just $29 per month.

$SPCE Lotto Calls - SpaceX IPO Play (+230%)

As we covered in a previous post, the SpaceX IPO narrative is still in full play.
We covered this play in a previously paid post which has since been unlocked.
We found at 2.42 USD - way before the squeeze started.
It reached a high of over $8 and might still go way higher on the IPO day.

Our 2k in calls turned into over 60k USD in pure profit.

- Memory shortage (+60%)

This speaks for itself. The new memory ETF is a good play for the shortage and we caught it early: +60% gains since 5 May.

ServiceNow - SaaS-pocalypse (+56%)

If you have been following our notes closely, you would have seen mentioned many times and would have caught the bottom. It is our favorite SaaS stock, we have strong conviction that this AI fearmongering is overblown.
It has played out: from the $83 bottom up to $136 - a potential gain of more than +60%.

Our average is $87 - we will continue buying if it drops again to these ridiculous levels.

Zscaler - a rebound play (+19% in a week)

This was a very quick rebound play after Zscaler’s weaker guidance took the price down massively.
We posted around $134 and recommended to DCA - the price went all the way to $124. So it was very easy to catch a $130 average cost.

This resulted in a potential +22% gain in a single week.
(We continue to hold ZS longterm but selling after the quick rebound is a feasible choice too.)

Rubrik $RBRK: Cyber Sec Play (+26%)

We bought this cybersecurity play around $45 avg but announced it around $57 which was still a decent profit: +26%.

We are still holding this one as more upside is expected.

Now to the next plays which you don’t want to miss, especially during this current bloodbath. Opportunities are lying around, so make sure to subscribe if you don’t want to stay side-lined.

Verra Mobility

VRRM got absolutely destroyed after Avis pulled a major contract. The stock went from around $25 to under $4 in a few days because the market treated it like the company was heading for bankruptcy.

I don’t think that’s the base case.

Yes, the Avis loss is ugly. Yes, the debt and execution risk are real. But this is still a real business with a strong Government Solutions segment, sticky contracts, solid cash flow, and a valuation that now looks ridiculously cheap.

At these levels, the setup is simple: if management stabilises the business and executes on cost cuts, this could easily be a 2–3x recovery play. If they mess it up, it can go even lower. But we like the chances here.

Medium risk, high upside. Small speculative position only. Not financial advice. Do your own research.

Big position around $4 and lower.

Zscaler

Zscaler has dropped again under the $130 price level. I have personally used them at my previous work and I like the product. I know what it does, how it works and why Fortune 500 companies use it.
The weaker margins don’t mean the stock will never become profitable, ever.

This play is similar to the whole SaaS-pocalypse.

DCA below $130.

Sofi

Sofi has been on our watchlist for years. We first bought around $7 avg. but we sold it a long time ago. They have amazing growth and are modernizing the banking sector, many people on Reddit like their smooth mortgage process in the app.

Looking to enter below $15.50

Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. Do your own Due Diligence.

Industry Highlights

Upstream

• Australia ordered six China-linked investors (holding a combined 17.58% stake) to divest their shares in Northern Minerals within 14 days, citing national interest. Northern Minerals is developing the Browns Range heavy rare earth project, a critical Western source of dysprosium and terbium.
  -- Read More

• Arafura Rare Earths reached the Final Investment Decision (FID) for its Nolans Project in Australia, targeting commercial production of 4,440 tonnes of NdPr oxide annually by mid-2029. The FID was accompanied by a massive A$375 million equity raise, anchored by A$85 million from Hancock Prospecting, completing the equity portion of its A$1.6 billion capital requirement.
  -- Read More

• Geopolitical tensions crystallized in Myanmar, the world’s largest source of heavy rare earths outside China. The Kachin Independence Army (KIA), which seized control of the critical Chipwi and Pangwa mining hubs in late 2024, has now formalized its role as the de facto regulator of the supply corridor, imposing fixed taxation rates on rare earth shipments bound for China.
  -- Read More

• Tanbreez signed a 15-year binding offtake agreement with REalloys for 15% of concentrate production from its Greenland rare earth project. The deal includes priority rights to dysprosium and terbium, specifically targeting military-grade magnet applications.
  -- Read More

• Perpetua Resources secured a monumental $2.9 billion in loan backing from the U.S. Export-Import Bank for its Stibnite Gold Project in Idaho, which hosts America’s only identified domestic antimony reserve.
  -- Read More

• Terrafame announced a pre-feasibility study to recover scandium from its Sotkamo complex in Finland. If successful, it would become Europe’s only scandium producer, directly challenging China’s 85% dominance over the lightweight aerospace material.
  -- Read More

Midstream

• Mkango Resources signed an agreement to acquire Heraeus Amloy Technologies’ Remloy rare earth magnet recycling business in Germany for €8 million. The deal secures an operational facility with over 300 tonnes of feedstock inventory, accelerating Mkango’s push to build Europe’s sustainable magnet supply chain.
  -- Read More

• Neo Performance Materials announced a C$100 million bought-deal equity offering (priced at C$28.75 per share) to fund the expansion of its rare earth magnet and advanced materials operations in Europe.
  -- Read More

• POSCO International and ReElement Technologies announced a $200 million strategic partnership to build a rare earth separation and refining facility in the United States. The plant aims to produce 3,000 tons annually by late 2027, expanding to 6,000 tons by 2028, targeting the EV and AI hardware sectors.
  -- Read More

• China Northern Rare Earth continues to successfully pivot from bulk oxide sales to high-value specialty materials (like hydrogen-storage compounds and thermal stabilizers), with specialty product sales growing over 30% year-over-year in 2025. It is also enforcing stricter cost controls and enhanced secrecy protocols.
  -- Read More

• Metallium Limited won a $1M Department of Defense contract to scale the recovery of gallium and germanium from electronic waste using Flash Joule Heating technology.
  -- Read More

Downstream

• The Pentagon is reportedly planning a massive drone buildup, potentially reaching 300,000 units by 2028, intensifying demand for high-performance motors. Simultaneously, U.S. defense contractors are requesting waivers for the looming January 2027 ban on Chinese rare earth magnets in military supply chains, exposing glaring gaps in domestic manufacturing capability.
  -- Read More
  -- Read More

• Shin-Etsu Chemical has reportedly stopped accepting new orders for certain dysprosium-containing magnets as China effectively halted heavy rare earth exports to Japan amid rising geopolitical tensions over Taiwan.
  -- Read More

• China’s Baotou Rare Earth Products Exchange achieved full supply chain digitization, enabling 24-hour online transactions across 63 product categories—from upstream oxides directly through to downstream NdFeB magnets.
  -- Read More

Other News

• The U.S. Department of Energy announced $45.7 million in funding across 19 critical mineral and rare earth projects. However, industry analysts at REEx estimate the U.S. actually requires upwards of $100 billion to rebuild a truly competitive, independent mine-to-magnet ecosystem.
  -- Read More

• The European Union is establishing its first coordinated stockpile of critical minerals, including rare earths, tungsten, and gallium, in a defensive measure to mitigate Chinese supply chain dominance.
  -- Read More

• Fitch Ratings published an analysis confirming that China’s rare earth dominance is the result of an estimated $57 billion in strategic state investments across processing and downstream integration between 2000 and 2021, a multi-decade head start over Western industrial policy.
  -- Read More

• China’s Rare Earth Price Index settled at 251.4 on May 20, 2026. While down from early-2026 peaks, it remains massively elevated (150%+) above its 2010 baseline, with NdPr oxide pricing at $102-105/kg and terbium oxide remaining near $905-914/kg.
  -- Read More

Watchlist Updates (19–23 May 2026)

• Neo Performance Materials (NEO):
  On May 20, Neo announced a major C$100 million bought-deal equity offering priced at C$28.75 per share, led by BMO Capital Markets. The capital raise is explicitly targeted to fund the ongoing expansion of its rare earth magnet and advanced materials operations across Europe, further cementing Neo as the premier ex-China midstream platform. The offering is expected to close on May 28, 2026.

• Mkango Resources (MKA):
  Mkango executed a definitive agreement to acquire Heraeus Amloy Technologies’ Remloy rare earth magnet recycling business for €8 million (US$9.4 million). Financed through Mkango’s recent April equity placement, the deal secures an active German facility with over 300 tonnes of feedstock inventory, positioning Mkango to commence commercial alloy powder sales by the end of 2026.

We are going to walk through everything - the sells, the new buys, the ones we missed, and where we are looking next.

The Rare Earth Sector: A Reality Check

We have been patient with the rare earth and critical minerals space for a long time. But the US side is extremely slow which is frustrating. The sector has been a genuine disappointment.

Quarter after quarter, many of these companies have come in light on results, pushed timelines further out, and given the market very little reason to reward their share prices. The Tungsten and graphite sub-sector has been especially rough. Bad quarters, weak guidance, and a general sense that the US government is still not taking the critical minerals supply chain as seriously as the headlines would have you believe. Until the first real revenue drops, most of these companies are going to stay dead in the water. That is just the reality.

Ucore Rare Metals $UURAF - our favorite US midstream refiner - pushed their production timeline by half a year. We knew delays were coming based on the MD&A, but it still stings. The thesis has not changed: Ucore remains one of the only pure midstream rare earth players in the Western world, and that matters strategically. But the market does not care about strategy until it cares about revenue. We are still holding but not adding right now. Until 2027 we are not expecting any big moves.

Metallium $MTM has been particularly frustrating. They post frequent updates, the news flow is genuinely good, and the technology is real. They also have a big institutional demand according to them. But the stock does not care.
It keeps drifting lower, and in the recent sector-wide selloff it fell harder than almost anything else in this space: -45% YTD.

We are still fully convicted in the mid-term to long-term thesis. In fact, even more than Ucore.
But we are not going to pretend the performance has been anything other than painful - the price you pay for pre-revenue companies.

This is part of the game when you invest in pre-revenue speculative plays. Out of five positions in this category, maybe three will go to zero or close to it. One will be average. And if you are lucky, one will be a homerun that more than covers the rest. You have to understand that going in and size accordingly. We have always sized these small for exactly this reason.

We are not adding to any rare earth or miner positions right now. The sector needs to prove itself first before we’re going even deeper.

Oil Swing Trade: Watching and Waiting

We are watching the oil setup very carefully given the ongoing Trump-Iran tensions. We are not in anything right now, but if there is a clear moment of escalation or a tactical pullback that sets up a swing entry, we are looking at $USO and $UCO as the plays.

This is a swing trade idea, not a long-term position. We will be disciplined about sizing and exits. We are not trying to ride oil to $200. We are looking for a clean setup, a defined entry, and a quick move - there were SO MANY opportunities since January.

The Misses

We have a running theme this update and it is “stocks we watched, never researched properly, and then watched moon.”

Navitas Semiconductor ($NVTS) has been on our watchlist for months. We never found the time to do the proper deep dive. It had its run while we were busy elsewhere.

WhiteFiber ($WYFI) is the same story. Interesting company, on the list, never researched in time.

We are not beating ourselves up about it too much - you cannot own every name. But it is a good reminder that the watchlist means nothing if you do not do the work while the price is still right. We are making a more deliberate effort to clear watchlist items before they run for the next time! (Next watchlist stocks can be found at the end of the post)

$DRAM: CAUTIOUS Buy

We picked up a position in the new ETF about semiconductors around $45.
We like the setup, but we want to be transparent: sentiment around this ETF feels extremely stretched right now. Reddit is full of people pumping and $DRAM. When everyone is excited about something and the trade feels obvious, that is usually the moment to be most careful.

We bought our initial position and we are not adding. We will be watching closely and are ready to sell on the first real sign of weakness. This is not a high-conviction long-term hold right now. It might go far as the memory shortage is still here until 2028 but the crash can come way before that.

Read more

Industry Highlights

Upstream

• Arafura Rare Earths signed a binding dual offtake term sheet with Traxys: 500 tpa NdPr oxide and 7.5 tpa DyTb oxide from the Nolans project over five years, priced against independent indices and targeting U.S. supply chains, with potential EXIM Project Vault participation.
  -- Read More

• Rare Earth Americas raised $63.3M in an oversubscribed NYSE IPO, valuing the company at $368M. Proceeds fund four ionic clay and monazite sandstone projects across Brazil and the U.S.
  -- Read More

• Standard Lithium and Equinor secured FAST-41 federal permitting for South West Arkansas, targeting 22,500 tpa battery-grade lithium carbonate from 2029 — the 17th critical mineral project fast-tracked under the program.
  -- Read More

• Southern Alliance Mining has functionally transformed into an active rare earth producer through its 40% stake in MCRE’s Gerik ionic clay operation in Malaysia, with revenue surging 95% year-over-year on the back of heavy rare earth output.
  -- Read More

• Idaho National Laboratory identified 13,904 million metric tons of U.S. mine tailings containing critical minerals including cobalt, gallium, and germanium, highlighting the potential to convert legacy waste into domestic strategic resources.
  -- Read More

• Sojitz Corporation is expanding rare earth sourcing into Laos, Cambodia, and India, seeking China-adjacent geology without Chinese political control.
  -- Read More

• China Northern Rare Earth approved a 2026–2028 shareholder return plan mandating 30% of profits as dividends, while repaying a 500M yuan ultra-short-term bond at a subsidized 1.50% interest rate — a structural cost-of-capital advantage no Western peer can match.
  -- Read More

Midstream

• Evolution Metals & Technologies signed binding purchase orders with ULVAC Korea for 13 sintered NdFeB magnet production systems, targeting 10,000 metric tons annual capacity by November 2026 and attacking the magnet manufacturing chokepoint directly.
  -- Read More

• China’s rare earth price index printed at 269.6 on May 12, with neodymium oxide at $61–64/kg and terbium oxide at $892–901/kg domestically, while ex-China buyers continue paying significant premiums for independently sourced dysprosium and terbium supply.
  -- Read More

• The Asian Metal Summit in Xiamen confirmed China holds 45–50% control of critical midstream processing and 85–90% of rare earth refining and metallization, with Western diversification efforts yielding visible but still insufficient counter-capacity.
  -- Read More

Downstream

• Baogang Group achieved commercial-scale deployment of rare earth-enhanced automotive steel across multiple Chinese EV brands, embedding rare earth content into structural performance and vehicle lightweighting beyond magnets alone.
  -- Read More

• Tencent and Envision Group deployed the world’s first direct-supplied green-energy AI data center in Inner Mongolia, bypassing public grids to cut integrated energy costs by over 40% while deepening structural demand for rare earth magnets in motors and power electronics.
  -- Read More

• Advanced Electric Machines argues reluctance motors built from steel and aluminum can eliminate rare earth magnet dependency while improving recyclability. Japanese and Indonesian researchers separately identified Fe₂NiZn, AlFe₂Ni, and Co₂MnSb as computationally promising rare-earth-free NdFeB alternatives.
  -- Read More
  -- Read More

• Mobix Labs announced plans to acquire Special Project Delivery LLC, linking defense electronics procurement directly to domestic critical minerals recovery and bypassing Chinese midstream intermediaries.
  -- Read More

Other News

• During the May 13–15 Trump–Xi Beijing summit, China’s Foreign Ministry signaled no imminent supply chain disruption while Xi framed cooperation as mutually necessary — a posture analysts read as Beijing negotiating from strength rather than concession, with export licensing on rare earths intact.
  -- Read More
  -- Read More

• The EU Institute for Security Studies warned China controls 70%+ of refining capacity for 17 of 34 EU-designated critical materials, using export controls to shape long-term dependency and gather industrial intelligence rather than solely restrict supply.
  -- Read More

• China’s MIIT launched 2026–2027 energy-efficiency inspections across steel, aluminum, batteries, and data centers, with potential plant shutdowns and consolidation that could reshape global manufacturing costs and supply chain competitiveness.
  -- Read More

• Mercator Institute for China Studies suggests Beijing could temporarily ease rare earth export restrictions in exchange for limited U.S. tariff concessions, though the deeper structural rivalry over advanced manufacturing supply chains remains unresolved.
  -- Read More

Watchlist Updates (13–15 May 2026)

• USA Rare Earth (USAR):
  Q1 2026 earnings presentation on May 13 confirmed $5.7M revenue and provided a strategic update: USAR now holds a term sheet to acquire a 12.5% stake in Carester (a European HREE separation and processing specialist), alongside the previously confirmed Serra Verde acquisition and TMRC consolidation. Crucially, the $1.6B DoC CHIPS Program funding package is now expected to finalize in May 2026, which would represent a major de-risking catalyst. BlackRock’s Schedule 13G filing separately confirmed beneficial ownership of 12.85M shares (5.9%) as of March 31, 2026. USAR traded in the range of $23.58–$25.50 on May 15.

• Neo Performance Materials (NEO):
  Q1 2026 results confirmed adjusted EBITDA more than doubled to $36.2M, with the Silmet heavy rare earth separation line in Estonia now in routine production of terbium and dysprosium. The Q1 webcast framed NEO as operationally the most advanced integrated ex-China rare earth platform — spanning separation through sintered magnet production — now generating meaningful earnings from that positioning.

• MP Materials (MP):
  SEC filings and financial media reporting confirmed CEO James Litinsky sold approximately $29M in shares on May 13 under a pre-arranged 10b5-1 plan, his ninth insider sale in the current cycle totaling an estimated $78.5M cumulatively. The sales were executed at an average near $64/share, with Litinsky retaining over 12 million shares. Market commentary noted the sales add sentiment friction to an otherwise strong Q1 operational print, though the pre-arranged plan structure removes any implication of information-based trading.

Industry Highlights

Upstream

• The U.S. faces a 29-year average timeline from rare earth discovery to production, with permitting alone consuming 7–10 years, structurally constraining America’s ability to convert its geology into industrial power regardless of funding levels.

• ADL Mineração (Brazil) exported its first container of monazite concentrate to Canada, targeting expansion from 500–1,000 tons in 2026 to 3,000 tons within two years, while signaling ambitions to build domestic downstream processing aligned with Brazil’s national critical minerals strategy.
  -- Read More

• St George Mining reported exceptional drill results at Brazil’s Araxá project: 63 meters at 5.8% TREO and 0.57% niobium oxide, including a 4.4-meter interval at 20.14% TREO, positioning it as a potential high-grade rare earth and niobium source.
  -- Read More

• Duke Kunshan University research reveals that Chinese government entities hold ownership stakes in 94 of China’s top 100 mining companies at an average of 78%, and Chinese miners pay only 55% of the borrowing costs faced by global competitors — a structural cost-of-capital advantage no Western policy can easily replicate.
  -- Read More

• The U.S. DFC is pivoting toward financing African mineral processing projects rather than attempting domestic repatriation, acknowledging that America currently lacks the large-scale infrastructure to compete with China in midstream conversion.
  -- Read More

Midstream

• Energy Fuels reported Q1 2026 revenue of $35.8M with positive $8.3M operating cash flow, and critically — achieved pilot-scale production of 99.9% pure terbium oxide, the first U.S. primary terbium production in decades, at its White Mesa Mill in Utah from ore mined in Florida.
  -- Read More

• MP Materials posted record Q1 2026 results: NdPr production of 917 metric tons (+63% YoY), NdPr sales of 1,006 metric tons (+117% YoY), total REO production of 12,983 metric tons (+6% YoY), and consolidated revenue of $132.9M, with its Magnetics segment generating positive $9.6M EBITDA while commissioning scaled heavy rare earth separation at Mountain Pass.
  -- Read More

• Shanghai Metals Market reports Pr-Nd oxide prices climbed 7.07% in April despite production cuts and weakening downstream demand, while China’s rare earth exports rose 10.9% year-over-year — a sign that export licensing controls are selectively applied, not universally restrictive.
  -- Read More

• Phoenix Tailings acquired Machinery Partner to build a vertically integrated rare earth technology platform combining advanced chemistry, hardware, automation, and AI-driven operational intelligence to compete with China’s industrial dominance.
  -- Read More

• Magnet manufacturers are aggressively reducing dysprosium and terbium loading per motor through grain-boundary diffusion and advanced formulations — a dynamic that could paradoxically strengthen China’s dominance by making manufacturing precision, rather than raw ore, the new moat.
  -- Read More

Downstream

• Proterial has introduced heavy-rare-earth-free NdFeB magnets for certain EV applications, while Nidec pursues reduced-heavy and eventually magnet-free motor architectures — validating MP Materials CEO’s warning that demand for dysprosium and terbium could weaken structurally as next-generation magnet technology becomes commercial.
  -- Read More
  -- Read More

• TSMC, ASML, and Samsung are emerging as strategic pillars in Great Powers Era 2.0, where semiconductor supply chain disruptions could cascade through AI, defense, and cloud infrastructure — elevating chip‑supply sovereignty to the same level as rare earth refining in national security calculations.
  -- Read More

Other News

• China’s rare earth price index printed at 269.6 as of May 8, 2026 — nearly 2.7x the 2010 baseline — with heavy rare earths like dysprosium and terbium declining while neodymium oxide held stable, reflecting state-managed pricing rather than open-market dynamics.
  -- Read More

• President Trump held a closed-door meeting with Brazil’s President Lula focused on tariffs, trade, and critical minerals. Days later, Lula declared Brazil’s rare earth sector open to all nations — U.S., China, Europe — but only if they invest in domestic processing, not raw extraction, directly complicating the Serra Verde deal’s framing as a U.S. strategic win.
  -- Read More
  -- Read More

• EXIM named Project Vault its 2024 Deal of the Year — the $10B public-private partnership to establish a U.S. Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve — while the REEx Structural Momentum Index held at 5.7, signaling transitional progress but no decisive breakthrough in Western supply chain independence.
  -- Read More
  -- Read More

• Vietnam and India signed 13 cooperation agreements including a rare earth partnership between Vietnam’s Institute of Rare Elements and India’s IREL Limited, reflecting how critical mineral supply chains have evolved from commercial networks into instruments of statecraft.
  -- Read More

• The U.S. DOE allocated $52M across 20 projects to strengthen domestic manufacturing and reduce foreign supply chain dependence — a meaningful but insufficient signal in the context of China controlling 94% of rare earth smelting and 30% of global manufacturing output.
  -- Read More

Watchlist Updates (7–10 May 2026)

• Energy Fuels (UUUU):
  Energy Fuels reported Q1 2026 results on May 5–6, confirming $35.8M in revenue and $8.3M positive operating cash flow. The headline milestone: first-ever U.S. primary production of 99.9% pure terbium oxide at pilot scale, processed at White Mesa from Florida mineral sands ore — a proof-of-concept that Energy Fuels’ mine-to-mill rare earth strategy is beginning to deliver actual product, not just positioning. The company also confirmed its planned acquisition of Australian Strategic Materials is progressing, which would add rare earth metal and alloy manufacturing capability to the platform when completed.

• MP Materials (MP):
  MP Materials delivered its strongest Q1 on record — 917 MT NdPr produced (+63% YoY), 1,006 MT NdPr sold (+117% YoY), $132.9M total revenue, and the Magnetics segment turning EBITDA-positive at $9.6M. The company is simultaneously advancing heavy rare earth separation commissioning at Mountain Pass and expanding the 10X magnetics facility, positioning it as the most execution-advanced Western magnet-materials platform — though the MP CEO’s own comments warning of structurally weakening Dy/Tb demand from next-gen motor designs introduce a long-term demand headwind for the very materials Mountain Pass is being built to supply.

The past few weeks have been very quiet for gold and silver. Oil stocks ripped on every war update, memory chips pumped on earnings, and precious metals just sat there doing nothing.

If you’re newer to this space, that silence probably feels uncomfortable. (Feel free to check the most previous post here)

So here is an update post to what I’m expecting for the rest of the year.

Miners Are Getting Crushed by Oil

Let’s address the obvious problem first.

Mining runs on diesel. When oil is at $40, energy is manageable. When oil is sitting above $100 because the Strait of Hormuz is a war zone, it eats massively into profits.
AISC is climbing fast which eats directly into margins, even with gold and silver still at historically high levels.

That is the main reason miners have badly underperformed the metals themselves lately. The downtrend of the miners-to-silver ratio makes that divergence very clear:

But this won’t last forever. If oil drops or metals break higher, margins snap back quickly and miners re-rate hard. But right now, they’re in a squeeze and the market is pricing that in.

The Ratios

Gold went parabolic to around $5,600, got rejected, and has been ranging since. Silver spiked to $121 in January, crashed nearly 44%, and has been chopping sideways ever since.

This kind of consolidation after a big war and geopolitical tension is completely normal. The two levels I’m watching: $82 on the upside as the breakout trigger and $70 on the downside as the line that needs to hold.
If we take a look at the Gold-to-Silver-ratio we can see how it flatlined:

The ratio has widened sharply during silver’s underperformance. That gap tends to close, usually when silver catches up, not when gold falls. But as long as instability exists (Iran war), it will probably keep flatlining until something changes.

China’s Premium

While paper prices are chopping sideways, Chinese buyers are paying above the COMEX benchmark to secure physical delivery. That doesn’t happen when demand is low.

Paper can do whatever it wants short-term. When real buyers are outbidding the benchmark to get metal in hand, that tells me that the futures price is fake.

But can we prove it? Yes, we can.

COMEX Inventory: Still Bleeding

This is the chart I check most often, and the trend has not changed:

COMEX registered silver inventory broke below 100 million ounces earlier this year - a modern record low. Withdrawals have been consistent. The Silver Institute is projecting a sixth consecutive annual deficit for 2026. The CME is doing what it always does: rolling contracts from May to June, buying another month, hoping enough longs take cash instead of demanding physical delivery.

It’s the same playbook every time. But inventory keeps declining, and the silver gets harder to manage each cycle.

Will it have an end? Yes, the COMEX can’t keep this game up forever.
As soon as the registered silver inventory drops to critical levels and the ETF gets squeezed dry, the COMEX will technically enter the default.
As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, the COMEX will obviously not go down easily.
But the inventory numbers don’t lie.

Rest of 2026 Playbook

If oil stays high:

• miners stay under pressure

• silver stays rangebound. Supported by physical demand but capped by macro noise.

If oil pulls back:

• miner margins snap back immediately (falling AISC)

• macro headwinds fade and silver moves upwards

If COMEX inventory keeps bleeding:

• at some point the inventory reaches critical levels and a large holder demands delivery instead of cash settlement. That scenario can move silver very quickly and with very little warning. Panic will ensue and the paper price will move towards the physical price while packs up and closes.

I’m holding my positions, not adding aggressively yet even while they dropped a lot, and watching the inventory data every week. Looking at it objectively, the oil shock is yet to come and it doesn’t look like oil will fall soon.

The range will break sooner or later, just watch the silver inventory and be ready.

Disclaimer: This is not financial advice.

SpaceX exposure without buying SpaceX

SpaceX is getting closer to a public listing, and that has pushed retail into trying to profit from it: how do you get exposure before the IPO if you cannot buy the shares directly? The short answer is that you use a proxy, but the leverage of that proxy varies on the structure underneath it.

There is still no clean retail option that gives pure SpaceX exposure with no trade-offs. What exists instead is a mix of crossover ETFs, closed-end funds, venture-style funds, listed companies with indirect stakes, and space-sector stocks that move with the sector.
So what is the best play? To be fair, none. The risk/reward is not worth it as you can easily get burned with IPOs. (see as an example)
If you still want to have a small piece of the pie, your best bet is to buy Google stock

However, if you want to take a small, asymmetrical gamble then you can find my biggest conviction play at the end of this post - a stock which might be a 10x up to a 30x, basically the perfect options setup.

The Problem

The basic problem is simple. SpaceX is private, so retail cannot just log into a brokerage account and buy it - except if you are an accredited investor with about $250k ready to invest. That forces people into wrappers, where you have to deal with things like fees, liquidity, premiums to NAV, and SPV structures. (aside from the SpaceX allocation)

That is also why two products with similar “SpaceX exposure” can behave very differently in practice. One may trade close to the value of its holdings, while another may swing around based on sentiment, spread, or structural friction.
But even if you can’t invest directly, there are still a few asymmetric plays worth considering.

The Play

XOVR

One ticker that keeps coming up as the most popular proxy play is $XOVR. It is a crossover ETF that mixes public and private holdings, and SpaceX is one of their main investments - a decent 22.26%:

Their management fee is also acceptable with 0.75%:

Even though it is an ETF, they have some decent holdings: Some Mag7, Reddit, Robinhood, Astera Labs and more.
However they also have some questionable biotech stocks.

But the appeal is obvious. It trades like an ETF, it is accessible in a normal brokerage account, and it gives decent exposure to SpaceX.
The catch is that it is still kind of random portfolio, so you are also buying the manager’s broader growth strategy, not just SpaceX.

DXYZ

$DXYZ is a different type of animal.​ It is a closed-end fund that owns a basket of private technology companies, with SpaceX commonly cited as one of the largest positions. The ETF is described like this on their official website:
“Destiny Tech 100 is designed to be an exchange-listed portfolio of the Top 100 High-Growth Tech Companies 🦄✨”

That makes it attractive for investors who want heavier private-company exposure, but it also introduces the classic closed-end fund problem: the market price can trade well above or below the value of the underlying assets.

Their SpaceX weight is decent with 16.2%.

That premium or discount dynamic is not a side issue. If sentiment gets too hot, you can end up paying a big markup for exposure.
Additionally, the management fee is very high: 2.5%

ARKVX

$ARKVX also comes up often in discussions. It gives venture-style exposure and has been cited is holding a meaningful SpaceX position of about 13.76%:

But let’s not forget it is a Cathie Wood ETF - and you probably know how they have performed in the past. I personally was never a fan of any of her ETFs, even before the 2021 hype but this might be her best performing ETF yet. (with decent holdings)

I personally like the Kalshi and Anthropic holdings, albeit small.
I do not like the OpenAI and the Replit holdings.

The Middle Ground

NASA and the broader space play

Some investors do not want a pure SpaceX proxy. They want a fund that captures the broader sector of launch, satellites, communications, and orbital infrastructure.
That is where $NASA comes in: Tema Space Innovators ETF
If you believe in the space sector in general, this might be a good play.
It just launched ~1 month ago.

NASA is a space-sector ETF with SpaceX leverage rather than a play built around SpaceX alone. That makes it easier to hold for investors who want diversification, but it also means the performance will depend on a wider group of space stocks, not only on SpaceX. So if the whole sector suffers, then the whole ETF will crash hard.
The expense ratio at 0.94% is on the higher side but acceptable.

Their SpaceX holdings are on the lower side: 11.80%:

Scottish Mortgage and Baron funds

A more institutional route is through securities that have held SpaceX for years rather than adding it recently as a marketing stunt. Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust and various Baron products fall into that category.

These options are usually less headline-driven than the more speculative retail favorites, but they are still proxies.

See $BPTRX for Barons fund:

The public-company workarounds

If you want to skip ETFs and funds altogether, then Alphabet is the obvious choice because it has historically held a stake in SpaceX. The problem is that Alphabet is so large and so diversified that any embedded SpaceX value barely moves the stock relative to its core ad and AI businesses but it is better than nothing - Google remains one of my favorites. They hold roughly a 5% fully diluted stake in SpaceX, along with a stake in Anthropic.

Another public company is EchoStar which is more speculative and more interesting as a narrative trade. It is discussed because of its spectrum-for-equity arrangement with SpaceX, which could leave it holding actual SpaceX equity if the deal is completed. That gives it some leverage as an indirect proxy, but it is still mostly a bet on a separate, random company with its own risks.
See this Reddit thread for detailed info: https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/1segbbk/why_echostar_sats_is_the_best_spacex_preipo/

Spill-over Stocks

If you are looking to invest into a stock which might profit from the sector, then stocks like Rocket Lab , AST SpaceMobile , Planet Labs (huge run already) and Intuitive Machines are a good fit.
In reality, they are not real proxies but if the IPO is successful, the gains will spill over to all other space stocks.

TL;DR they are space-sector trades. They may benefit from the same long-term growth narrative around launch, connectivity, and orbital infrastructure but have different business models^.

Moonshot Plays

Jet.AI

Then there is Jet.AI , which is one of the stranger niche stocks that started circulating once it announced a $5 million SPV economic interest tied to xAI. They framed that as indirect exposure to SpaceX, Starlink, and X.
That announcement is what pushed Jet.AI into discussions but if we take a look at their chart, we can see that it is extremely ugly:

Jet.AI itself is not a space company in the usual sense. It has historically been tied to private aviation software, charter services, and related AI tools. So if you buy JTAI for the SpaceX angle, you are really buying a micro-cap with a small strategic investment and a lot of unrelated business risk attached. High risk, high reward.

The interesting part? Jet.AI’s market cap is just $4.6M at the time of writing - less than their investment.
The market is probably pricing in a near-zero probability of JTAI surviving long enough to actually realize value from the SpaceX stake and distrust in the management.

Even if it might be a good moonshot, there is an even better and safer lotto play in the next chapter.

SPCE

This is the play with biggest momentum potential. The notorious and failed space stock Virgin Galactic:

This thing is an absolute shitco, a lot of people became bagholders in 2021.
The company continues to dilute, will miss April milestones (structural assembly, ground testing) that will likely delay the lofty goal of Q4 flights, and the end game is sending rich people on sub-orbital flights…
However they had some good news recently: They reopened and started selling spaceflight tickets at higher price - $750,000 per ticket.
This means they are back in business. The company is still considered junk but combine that with the SpaceX IPO and you get a nice momentum play.

CEO Michael Colglazier says the company will release 50 new seats for its suborbital flights. These journeys last around 90 minutes and are expected to begin in late 2026 or early 2027.

The stock is so beaten down that any small amount of hopium will pump the stock back up.
While 52w IV% is sitting at 46%, it is the perfect opportunity to buy some lotto calls on it. $100 could easily turn into $20K if the SpaceX IPO is indeed successful.

But to make it clear again - this is an absolute lotto play. If you decide to take the odds, don’t put a big amount of your portfolio into it.

Upstream

• China Northern Rare Earth reported roughly $5.9B in 2025 revenue and about $313M in net profit, while pushing aggressively from ore into applications via smart‑factory roll‑outs and optimized pricing mechanisms that reinforce its market dominance.
  -- Read More

• USA Rare Earth agreed to acquire Brazil’s Serra Verde for about $2.8B, combining cash and new USAR shares to control an integrated mine and processing complex in Goiás, with management guiding to ~6,400 tpa REO capacity by 2027 and DFC backing. A Brazil Supreme Court petition filed days later to block the sale underlines how fast resource‑nationalist politics can reprice “done” deals.
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• Resolution Minerals raised A$20M at a 6.3% premium to accelerate drilling and permitting at the Horse Heaven antimony project in Idaho, backed by Tribeca and L1 Capital, yet REEx notes the U.S. still faces a 7–10 year runway and unresolved permitting/financing risk in a metal where it imports ~85% from China.
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• Meteoric Resources followed up its Caldeira ionic‑clay resource disclosure (~1.5Bt at ~2,300 ppm TREO) with a $40M raise at no discount, funding a path to a targeted 13,500 tpa by 2028 while confirming institutional appetite for Brazilian REE exposure despite permitting and infrastructure risk.
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• Critical Metals Corp increased its economic exposure at Greenland’s Tanbreez (eudialyte) project to 92.5% and is now pursuing an $835M all‑stock deal to acquire European Lithium, but REEx stresses the Arctic conditions, 30% recovery rates, and minimal infrastructure likely stretch timelines beyond 10 years.
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• The U.S. Department of Energy allocated $5.4M across five early‑stage projects to restart domestic gallium production after nearly four decades, a symbolic signal in a segment where China controls an estimated 95–98% of global supply.
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• A 37‑jurisdiction mining tax study led by Craig Hutton finds investors often retain only 10–25 cents per dollar of copper revenue after taxes and royalties, with Chile down at 9.5% despite world‑class deposits—numbers that implicitly cap equity returns even before capex blowouts.
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Midstream

• Ucore Rare Metals is developing its RapidSX separation technology in Louisiana with $22.4M in DoD funding, targeting commercial operations around 2027, but still faces classic permitting and scale‑up risk in a field dominated by China’s decades‑old solvent‑extraction banks.
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• China’s rare earth price index printed at 272.8 on April 24 and 271.8 on April 27, signalling a managed plateau rather than free‑market volatility; within that, neodymium oxide at roughly $31.6–34.4/kg and heavy REEs like dysprosium show selective softness but remain structurally tight.
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• Lynas remains the only scaled producer of separated heavy rare earth oxides outside China, as its Malaysian facility expands into Dy/Tb, but volumes are still finite relative to China’s ~98–99% dominance in heavy‑rare‑earth refining capacity.
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• HyProMag opened Germany’s first rare earth magnet recycling plant in Pforzheim using HPMS (hydrogen processing of magnet scrap), with design capacity of up to 750 t/y—a positive start, but still just a sliver of Europe’s ~20,000 t magnet demand.
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• Jinlong Rare Earth and Baotou are pushing Phase II of an NdFeB magnet project that will add 5,000 t capacity, targeting 10,000 t/y by December 2026 with proprietary automation—another brick in China’s already ~94% share of global magnet output.
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• A cluster of academic and industrial studies points to both substitution and efficiency levers: samarium‑cobalt and samarium‑iron magnets re‑emerge as high‑temperature alternatives; recycling and ferrite substitution could shave up to 40% off rare earth magnet demand in mobility; and cutting Dy content from 4% to 1% in NdFeB magnets can cut environmental impacts by 11–64% while saving about €10/kg.
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• China continues to push process technology: new membranes and extraction innovations are aimed at lowering costs and extending refining dominance, while technical specifications now demand 99.999% purity for terbium and dysprosium in high‑performance magnets—a 45× tighter impurity window most ex‑China projects cannot yet hit at scale.
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Downstream

• Foundation Future Industries won a $24M Pentagon contract to develop humanoid robots for battlefield deployment, adding yet another defense‑linked demand stream that depends on China‑controlled rare earths for motors, actuators, and sensors.
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• Baogang Group is exporting a 300,000 m³/h sintered‑plate dust collector with chip‑embedded filters to Vietnam, embedding Chinese process equipment directly in Southeast Asia’s ionic‑clay heavy‑rare‑earth belt.
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• Baogang Steel also unveiled rare‑earth‑enhanced pipeline steel optimized for pure hydrogen transport, addressing embrittlement at the materials level and showcasing what a fully integrated mine‑to‑deployment ecosystem can do when hydrogen and rare earths are designed together.
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• A Utah hyperscale data‑center proposal targeting Amazon, Microsoft, and Google could consume more power than the entire state, but the deeper constraints highlighted are semiconductors and magnet supply chains rather than raw electricity.
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• REEx underlines asymmetric warfare economics: $20,000 drones are forcing deployment of $10–15M interceptors, while much of the weapons production chain is still dependent on China‑controlled rare earths and semiconductors.
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Other News

• Kamoa Capital highlights that the U.S. has authorized over $700B in industrial‑policy capital, including a DoD $110/kg NdPr price floor for MP Materials, yet only around 15% has actually been deployed due to permitting and project‑execution bottlenecks.
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• China introduced a national evaluation system that makes provincial party committees directly accountable for carbon and energy targets from 2026, and separately passed new rules enabling legal action against firms “harming” its supply chains—codifying economic dependence into explicit coercive leverage.
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• EU sanctions on 27 Chinese entities linked to Russia’s military were met within 24 hours by Chinese export restrictions on seven European defense firms, exposing Europe’s ~98% dependency on Chinese rare earth magnets in its own defense systems.
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• The UAE’s exit from OPEC after 60 years to regain production flexibility signals that countries are prioritizing sovereign resource control over producer‑cartel coordination in an increasingly fragmented system—an echo of what we see in rare earths, cobalt, and nickel.
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• OECD data show Southeast Asia and India hold about 46% of global nickel and 7–8% of rare earths but, like Africa, still export ~96% of critical minerals as raw or lightly processed materials while most refining and profits concentrate in China and a few other hubs.
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Watchlist Updates (24–28 April 2026)

• USA Rare Earth (USAR):
  Between April 24 and April 25, Brazilian media and international outlets reported that Rede Sustentabilidade, a left‑wing political party, petitioned Brazil’s Supreme Court to block the $2.8B sale of Serra Verde to USA Rare Earth. The filing requests an immediate suspension of the transaction on national-security grounds, arguing that current legislation lacks constitutional safeguards to protect strategic mineral assets from foreign control. This court challenge injects material political and execution risk into the deal just days after it was announced.

• American Rare Earths (ARR):
  On April 27, American Rare Earths published its Quarterly Activities Report for the period ended March 31, 2026. The report detailed the company’s acceleration of the Halleck Creek project, highlighting the active Wyoming-led pilot plant engineering program, ongoing oxide-to-metal processing studies, and the advancement of its pre-feasibility study targeted for Q3 2026. The company also reported maintaining a healthy cash position of roughly A$24.8M as it prepares for a planned NASDAQ listing.

• Mkango Resources / HyProMag (MKA):
  On April 28, Mkango announced that its subsidiary HyProMag GmbH officially opened its rare earth magnet recycling and manufacturing plant in Pforzheim, Germany. The ceremony was attended by a Parliamentary State Secretary of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. The facility is permitted for up to 750 t/y of NdFeB magnets and alloys, initially ramping from ~100 t/y to 350 t/y within three years using patented HPMS (Hydrogen Processing of Magnet Scrap) technology, establishing Europe’s first commercial‑scale rare earth magnet recycling hub.

Over the last year, tungsten has gone from a niche industrial metal to a real strategic commodity. The reason is simple: supply is tight, China remains dominant (see my previous posts), export controls have tightened, and Western buyers are suddenly paying much higher prices for a metal they mostly ignored - until now. That combination has created a multi-bagger setup for producers and developers, but it has also created a trap for investors who assume every tungsten stock is still cheap - many are overpriced, yet I see them everywhere on Reddit.

Tungsten is interesting because it sits at the intersection of geopolitics, industrial supply chains, and speculative mining equity leverage. It is one of those rare commodities where the end markets are boring on the surface (cutting tools, hardmetals, defense, aerospace) but the strategic value is rising fast. The risk, of course, is that the market has already priced in some of the best stocks, and that a lot of future good news may already be reflected in the share prices. (Looking at you Almonty…)

So this is not a “buy everything” play. In my view, some of the widely known names are already expensive relative to where their near-term operating results are likely to land, especially if Q1 numbers are still soft and the real operating leverage only starts to show up in Q2 or later. That is especially true for Almonty, and arguably even EQ Resources can disappoint near term if execution slips or operating costs stay stubborn.

At the same time, some of the non-producing names are also starting to look expensive if the market cap has already run ahead of production reality. A company with a few hundred million in market value and production still three to five years out is not automatically a bargain, even if the geology is interesting, because tungsten prices can fall long before first concentrate is sold. What happens if 100 explorers suddenly turn into producers? An obvious oversupply will happen and prices will return back to normal - not to mention geopolitics can change any time. (even with a simple Tweet…)
That is why I’m treating this as an asymmetric but still very dangerous sector.

Tungsten 101: What It Is and Why It Matters

Tungsten is a dense, hard metal with the highest melting point of any metal on the periodic table. That combination makes it uniquely useful in applications where heat, wear, and mechanical stress are unavoidable. It is not a “flashy” metal, but it is one of those materials that modern industry depends on.

Historically, tungsten was used in incandescent bulbs and basic hardmetals. Today, its main role is in cemented carbides, cutting tools, drilling, wear parts, armor‑piercing applications, and high‑temperature industrial systems. It also shows up in defense, aerospace, semiconductors, and certain solar manufacturing steps, where substitution is often possible in theory but poor in practice.

What makes tungsten strategically important is that performance matters more than cost in many of these uses. If you replace tungsten with a softer, less heat-resistant material, tool life drops, tolerances worsen, or the part simply fails under stress. That is why tungsten keeps appearing on critical minerals lists and why governments are suddenly paying attention to supply security.

Why the Market Tightened

The tungsten market has become much tighter because Chinese supply policy has changed since Trump’s escalation with China. China still dominates mining and processing, and recent quota reductions plus tougher export licensing have made ex‑China buyers more vulnerable than they were a few years ago.
In practical terms, the market is now more fragmented, more political, and more price-sensitive while no decent western producer exists.

Demand is also broadening. Traditional industrial uses are still the core, but defense stockpiling, advanced manufacturing, semiconductor tooling, and solar-related applications have all become more relevant to the investment case. The result is a market where prices can move sharply even without a huge change in global unit demand, simply because the supply base is so concentrated.

The rally has been violent. Industry and market coverage describe tungsten intermediate prices moving from roughly the mid‑$300s per mtu at the end of 2024 toward around $900 per mtu late in 2025, and in some reports beyond $3000 per mtu in early 2026. The direction is clear: the market has repriced the metal drastically as prices keep rising.

See for yourself:

BUT: High tungsten prices don’t necessarily mean higher profits or higher stock prices.

One thing that slows demand destruction in industrial settings is the friction of switching. Manufacturers cannot simply swap out tungsten tooling overnight - CNC programs, cutting speeds, feed rates, coolant settings, and supplier qualifications all need recalibrating for any substitute material. That lag gives the price spike time to sustain itself even after buyers start looking for alternatives, which is part of why the current price regime has lasted longer than many expected.

It is also worth noting how the price spike flows through the supply chain. Miners capture most of the upside: their operating costs (labour, energy, reagents) do not rise proportionally with tungsten prices, so margins expand dramatically in a squeeze. Distributors and intermediate processors in the middle of the chain, however, often face a cost-price squeeze of their own, absorbing part of the raw material increase rather than passing it fully through to customers. This is a useful reminder that “tungsten is going up” does not mean every participant in the value chain benefits equally. It is one more reason to focus on miners and producers rather than trading companies or downstream processors.

Where the Risk Lies

The thesis and the potential are real, but they’re not a straight line. A global slowdown, faster-than-expected ex-China supply growth, or a policy shift from Beijing could cool prices faster than the market expects. And mining has a long history of turning great-looking projects into capital destroyers through metallurgy problems, capex blowouts, or permitting nightmares. (See Lassonde curve)

There is also the valuation problem. Some tungsten stocks already trade as if strong Q1s, strong Q2s and perfect execution are all guaranteed. That is not how mining works, and it is certainly not how junior mining behaves.
My instinct is to respect the thesis, but to not get FOMO.

Tiering Logic

I have analyzed company after company. Thesis after thesis. But in the end, I ended up with a huge basket of explorers, near-term producers and moonshots, feeling even more lost than before the research. So I started looking at production first and then at other metrics like jurisdiction, financials etc.

So I split the names into three tiers.

• Tier 1: best asymmetric setups, where jurisdiction, quality, and either current production or very clear de‑risking are present.

• Tier 2: solid assets with real upside, but with obvious risk around funding, timing, scale, or execution.

• Tier 3: high-risk explorers, highly promotional situations, or names that are either too early or too complex for me to call investable.

The important nuance is that “Tier 1 asset” does not always mean “Tier 1 stock.” A great asset can still be an expensive equity if the market has already priced in too much success. (which has been the case for many companies in the sector lately)

The List

(Substack still has no real table support, my apologies.)

EQ Resources – ASX: EQR

EQ Resources is the most important western tungsten producer to watch. Mt Carbine in Queensland is producing, Barruecopardo in Spain adds geographic diversification, and the company has been working through expansion. This puts it in a category of three globally alongside Almonty and Masan.

What I like is the combination of existing production, government support, and further upside from higher‑grade zones and plant expansion. What I do not like is that the stock has already rerated hard, and the market may be assuming smooth execution and very strong near‑term operating leverage. The reality is that management still has to deliver on throughput, cost control, and financing.
For some reason, the stock price also didn’t really budge during the Iran war crash.

The December 2025 quarter looked like a breakout: group WO₃ production jumped 33% QoQ to 38,292 mtu, EQ delivered its first‑ever cash‑flow‑positive quarter, and the share price ran nearly 900% in six months to a peak market cap above A$1bn. That momentum hit a wall in the January–March 2026 quarter. The March 2026 quarterly report (released 28 April) shows group production dropping to 23,505 mtu, a 39% decline, driven by Spain’s wettest start to the year in roughly 50 years at Barruecopardo (18,768 mtu, down from 32,408) and wet‑season plus crusher refurbishment issues at Mt Carbine (4,737 mtu, down from 5,884). Operating cash flow swung to an A$11.5m outflow, cash at 31 March was A$15.8m with all A$32m of debt facilities fully drawn, and the company disclosed only 1.4 quarters of operating cash cover under the ASX test (below the two‑quarter comfort line).

There are offsetting positives. APT sat at around US$2,800/mtu at quarter‑end and EQ’s average realised price was US$1,004/mtu against a cash cost of US$571/mtu, so even a bad volume quarter still threw off margin. More importantly, the high‑grade Iolanthe vein at Mt Carbine was finally accessed in the last week of March, and management says the plant is now ramping with ore roughly three to four times the grade of the legacy low‑grade stockpiles. Guidance is still for 3,000–3,200 tonnes WO₃ over the next 12 months, stepping up toward 4,000 tpa, and an investor webinar on 29 April is scheduled to walk investors through the recovery plan and 2026 outlook. On the capital‑markets side, UBS has emerged as a 5% substantial holder via a prime‑brokerage structure and insiders have been adding, while an earlier ASX Listing Rule 7.1 breach around a Cronimet debt‑to‑equity conversion has been acknowledged and governance tightened.​

Retail sentiment has been broadly bullish, with EQ often mentioned as one of the best western tungsten plays, and the stock barely flinched during the Iran war crash. My view is that EQ is still a core tungsten play, but now with a very explicit balance‑sheet timer running in the background. I like the combination of existing production, high‑grade upside and structural tungsten tailwinds but I dislike the tight funding headroom and the fact that the stock has already lived through a boom. It can still work very well from here, but I only want to size it as a core position if my entry price builds in room for one more rough quarter, and I would not assume the next couple of reports will automatically justify every part of the earlier rerating.​

Almonty Industries — TSX: AII, NASDAQ: ALM

Almonty is still the biggest strategic tungsten company outside China, and Sangdong is the asset that matters most. Phase 1 at Sangdong is now in production as commissioning was completed on 16 March 2026, and the mine completion ceremony was held on 1 April, marking the formal return to production at one of the world’s historic tungsten deposits. On top of that, Almonty has shifted its corporate headquarters from Toronto to Dillon, Montana, tying management directly to its Gentung/Browns Lake project and to U.S. defense and government stakeholders. The stock has responded, hitting a new all‑time high in 2026 and gaining roughly 680% over the last year.​

All of that makes Almonty the western flagship by default, but I still think the market may be ahead of the fundamentals around the edges. The company has real scale, a credible path to being the largest ex‑China tungsten producer once Sangdong Phase 2 and Montana are online, and binding offtakes into the U.S. defense supply chain. It also has a long history of dilution and heavy capex, and FY2025 financials show a large headline loss, even if most of that was non‑cash derivative revaluation as the share price exploded. There is also a live decision around a potential reverse stock split (up to 5:1) that the board needs to make, which could affect near‑term trading dynamics.

The bullish case is straightforward: Sangdong ramps smoothly, Phase 2 is funded, Montana hits its H2 2026 target, the non‑China supply deficit stays tight and Almonty becomes the default flagship western supplier into a high‑price environment.
The bear case is equally clear: commissioning or financing hiccups, or an APT pullback, can hit a stock that has already re‑rated hard. I still like Almonty but the ~$6B market cap is just insane. It’s one of the best strategic assets in the sector, but I wouldn’t assume it’s automatically cheap just because tungsten pricing is strong.

Tungsten West – LSE (AIM): TUN

Tungsten West still owns one of the more interesting restart cases in the sector: Hemerdon in the UK. It’s a fully permitted brownfield project with scale, grid power and a processing plant that has already run before, and at nameplate it’s designed to process 3.5 Mtpa of ore into ~3,320 t of WO₃ and 462 t of tin annually over an 18.5‑year mine life. On paper, that puts Hemerdon squarely in the top tier of ex‑China tungsten operations by scale.​

What’s changed in 2026 is that the restart timeline and funding are now more concrete. The Q1 2026 project update reaffirmed a target to restart the fines gravity circuit in Q3 2026 and move to full plant commissioning from Q1 2027, with earthworks underway and remaining major sub‑contracts being lined up. A £22.3m mining equipment finance package is in place, and the company is in advanced due diligence on up to US$85m of debt, including a US$25m first tranche management believes is close to closing. Earlier in the year, Tungsten West also completed a combined £29.3m subscription and £11.0m placing, strengthening the equity side of the balance sheet.

The basic problem (and opportunity) remains the same. Restarting a mine is never just a geological problem: it’s about funding terms, refurbishment quality, capex discipline and ramp‑up execution, especially given Hemerdon’s chequered history under Wolf Minerals. The most compelling thing here is that the asset is real, permitted and large while the least compelling is that the company still has to convert that into a functioning, financed, stable operation. In my book that keeps Tungsten West in Tier 1 as a developer, but it’s absolutely not low risk.

Allied Critical Metals — CSE: ACM, OTCQB: ACMIF

Allied Critical Metals has turned what was a clean European development play into a funded near‑term production play in a matter of weeks. Borralha and Vila Verde in Portugal are still the core of the portfolio, but the April 24 announcement of a US$40m financing package (US$25m equity plus US$15m project funding) now fully funds the Vila Verde pilot plant and materially de‑risks the path to first production. The company is guiding to first tungsten concentrate from Vila Verde in Q4 2026 and has an offtake covering 50% of pilot output with a 2026 floor price of US$1,000/mtu.

At Borralha, the March 2026 PEA lays out a clear economic case: 1.4 Mtpa, an 11‑year mine life, average annual production of about 1,708 t WO₃ (peak 2,388 t/yr) and a 48.8% IRR with a 2.2‑year payback at US$1,000/mtu. A 20,000 m drill programme is underway to grow the resource, and new drilling at the New Venise target has already intersected more than 200 m of breccia‑hosted tungsten mineralisation, suggesting upside beyond the PEA envelope.

The bull case is now very straightforward: funded Q4 2026 pilot production, robust PEA economics and a clear EU critical‑minerals jurisdiction.
The bear case is the usual one for this stage: the pilot plant is small by design, and the jump from a few hundred tonnes per year at Vila Verde to full Borralha scale will still require more capital and flawless execution. From a basket perspective, though, Allied is now comfortably a Tier 1 development play thanks to European jurisdiction, restart optionality, real scale and a clear first‑production date in sight.

Masan High‑Tech Materials — UPCoM (Vietnam): MSR

Masan High‑Tech Materials remains one of the very few real tungsten producers with scale outside China, and Nui Phao in Vietnam continues to be strategically important.
What’s different now is how clearly management is leaning into tungsten’s role.
I didn’t know about this tungsten play either but it is one of the biggest companies in this space.
At the April AGM, Masan framed the strategy as “Powering the AI Age with Critical Minerals,” guided to up to US$95m in net profit for 2026 in a strong price scenario, and confirmed a plan to grow tungsten output from roughly 2,000 t/yr today to 5,000–6,000 t/yr over the next three years. The company is also preparing to upgrade its listing up to the main Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange, which should improve liquidity and institutional access. (Currently listed on Vietnam's UPCoM (Unlisted Public Company Market) under the Hanoi Stock Exchange)

That makes MSR less of a junior optionality play and more of a real producer and cycle‑beta name. Nui Phao proves that tungsten is already a cash‑flowing business, not just a speculative mining trade, and it gives Masan leverage to the current APT environment in a way most juniors can’t match. The caution flag is standard producer risk rather than any single April headline: a single‑asset polymetallic producer can absolutely benefit from price spikes and still run into trouble if grades soften or costs creep up faster than pricing. For a tungsten basket, though, I still think this belongs in the “core” sleeve - even if access and liquidity are trickier for Western investors.​ (The stock is hard to buy!)

American Tungsten – CSE: TUNG, OTCQB: $TUNGF

American Tungsten is still a speculative brownfield bet on the IMA Mine in Idaho, but it has taken meaningful steps in 2026 and is one of my favorites. The company has raised around US$40m in a private placement and is openly guiding to first tungsten concentrate before the end of 2026 and commercial production in 2027. Underground drilling has extended the strike length of mineralisation on the D‑Level, with intercepts like 28.3 ft at 0.39% WO₃ and high‑grade zones to 1.03% WO₃ - a very good confirmation that there is something real to work with worth billions.​

The catch is that all of this is still pre‑study guidance: there is no completed PEA or feasibility study and no independent NPV, IRR or capex profile for the market to lean on yet. That’s why, even after the raise, I still treat this as a financing‑and‑execution story rather than a de‑risked project.​ But it is a very promising project with massive potential.

In that sense, nothing about the classification changes: this stays a Tier 2 name for me solely because there is no feasibility study - otherwise it would be a Tier 1 for me.
The upside is that brownfield assets can sometimes move quickly if drilling, metallurgy and financing all line up; the downside is that plenty of “near‑term restart” efforts end up burning a lot of capital without getting to stable commercial production. I’m interested, but I’m waiting for a first cut of economic numbers before I size it aggressively.
Full disclosure, I have already bought in September.

Guardian Metal Resources – LSE (AIM): GMET

Guardian Metal controls Nevada projects (Pilot Mountain and Tempiute) that sit squarely in the U.S. critical‑minerals policy sweet spot. It has done exactly what you would expect a strategically positioned junior to do: secure roughly US$6.2m in U.S. Department of Defense funding, join the Defense Industrial Base Consortium, and then launch a roadshow for a US$50m ADS IPO on NYSE American under the symbol $GMTL in March 2026.

The issue is that this is still a development company - but the market seems to love it. Pilot Mountain has an updated resource with a 16% increase in open‑pit‑constrained Indicated Resources versus the 2018 scoping study baseline, and Tempiute has yielded visual tungsten mineralisation with assays pending, but there is no PEA or FS, and no credible production date yet. The optionality is very real: Nevada jurisdiction, DoD support and a planned U.S. listing are exactly what you want to see in this sector. But none of that eliminates the need to tick off drilling, metallurgy, permitting and financing.​

So I keep Guardian comfortably in Tier 2. It has much more genuine strategic value than most microcaps, but the market still has to prove these projects can evolve into financeable mines instead of just being attractive policy stories. It is currently undergoing a re-rating.

Fireweed Metals – TSX‑V: FWZ

Fireweed is still not a pure tungsten stock, but Mactung is one of the biggest tungsten resources in the West and the Lundin connection is a massive plus point. The 2026 twist is that the downstream industry has now put serious money behind it. In late March, Fireweed announced a C$61.5m private placement anchored by JX Advanced Metals Corporation and the Lundin Family, with JX explicitly framing the investment in terms of securing tungsten for advanced semiconductors and strategic technologies.

At the same time, Fireweed launched a full Feasibility Study for Mactung on March 8, 2026, with completion targeted for 2027. That combination (a world‑class resource, a strategic off‑taker and a funded FS) is about as strong a signal as you can ask for.

For me that keeps Fireweed in Tier 2, but with a bit more conviction. It’s a quality optionality name with a long timeline: production is realistically 2030+ once you factor in FS, permitting, financing and construction. It’s not the simplest way to play tungsten if your goal is near‑term cash generation, but if you’re willing to think in five‑year increments, this is one of the few deposits with the scale to really move the needle.

Tungsten Mining NL – ASX: TGN

Tungsten Mining NL is still one of those names that looks compelling on a slide and slow in real time. Mt Mulgine is a very big WA project, and the existing scoping study numbers, a 30‑year mine life at 9 Mtpa, roughly 4,700 t WO₃ per year at nameplate and NPV in the US$1.0–1.4bn range, put it solidly in the global top tier by potential scale. But large Australian projects still have to grind through the study, finance and construction cycle, and that takes years.

The good news is that the company has been moving the ball forward in 2026. It closed a A$53m placement to fund the PFS and DFS, secured strong shareholder support for all resolutions at an April 17 EGM, and announced a 15,000 m RC programme at the Watershed area starting June 2026 specifically to test an “accelerated development option” built around a higher‑grade starter pit. Management is targeting a PFS in Q3 2026 and a DFS in H2 2027, which at least pins some dates to their path.

I still classify this as a Tier 2 name. It has scale and relevance, but the burden of proof is firmly on execution and capital access. If Watershed drilling and the PFS demonstrate a lower‑capex first phase, the narrative changes; until then, it remains a long‑duration option.

Elmet Group – NASDAQ: $ELMT

Elmet just had its IPO and is now a listed company. In late April 2026, Elmet completed a roughly US$120.4m NASDAQ IPO under the ticker , positioning itself as a U.S.‑based manufacturer of precision tungsten and molybdenum components for high‑power microwave systems, aerospace and defense, medical devices and industrial applications. It’s a downstream tungsten play in the truest sense: not a miner, but a processor and fabricator that turns upstream products into finished parts.

In a tight tungsten market, processors and fabricators with specialised know‑how and long‑term contracts can benefit from supply stress as much as, or sometimes more than, mine owners - and they often have cleaner, more predictable business models than early‑stage developers. For investors who want tungsten exposure without pure mining risk, Elmet now offers this opportunity.

I wouldn’t put Elmet into a miner tier table, but I would include it in a “downstream ecosystem” group. The fact that it is now public makes it especially relevant as a benchmark for how the market is valuing tungsten‑exposed earnings versus tungsten‑exposed reserves.

Great Western Mining Corporation – AIM: GWMO

Great Western Mining is still earlier‑stage, but the Nevada tungsten angle has firmed up in 2026. The Defender–Pine Crow project has moved from concept to an actual drill contract: in mid‑April the company signed Major Drilling America, Inc. to run a reverse‑circulation programme, with pad works slated for May and drilling expected to start in July 2026. The programme is designed to test mineralisation continuity between Defender and Pine Crow and to probe along strike toward the company’s existing M2 copper resource.

Management is openly targeting a maiden tungsten resource estimate in Q4 2026 off the back of this work. If the drilling validates grade and continuity, the market can re‑rate it quickly; if it disappoints, the speculative premium can evaporate just as fast.​

So I still keep Great Western in Tier 3. It’s one for traders who understand drill‑risk, not for anyone looking for a clean tungsten production thesis. The fact that there’s now a serious contractor and a firm Q4 MRE target just means the “event” is easier to time.

Perpetua Resources – NASDAQ: $PPTA, TSX: PPTA

Perpetua is still not a tungsten stock in the strict sense, but it belongs in the article because Stibnite is a flagship U.S. critical minerals project and part of the same policy ecosystem that is pushing tungsten into the spotlight. The market continues to treat it as an antimony‑gold strategic project with a much broader geopolitical angle than any single metal. They are quite established.

The last 18 months have materially de‑risked the project. Stibnite secured its federal Record of Decision in 2025, broke ground on early works in October 2025, and in March 2026 Perpetua amended its EPCM contract with Hatch to include pressure‑oxidation and oxygen system design under a US$204.3m control budget. First antimony and gold production is still targeted for around 2028–2029, with total planned output of roughly 450,000 oz of gold per year in the early years and about 148 million lb of antimony over mine life.

I still wouldn’t treat Perpetua as a primary tungsten play. It’s better viewed as a strategic critical‑minerals developer with a large Idaho footprint and deep U.S. government involvement. It belongs in the same conversation because it shows what a fully “blessed” U.S. critical‑minerals project looks like in practice, but it’s not where I’d go first for direct tungsten leverage as it’s more like a side-hustle.

Group 6 Metals – ASX: G6M (Suspended)

Disclaimer: As of early 2026, shares have been suspended from trading on the ASX since September 27, 2024, due to financial distress and a pending recapitalization, with the suspension continuing into early 2026.

The Dolphin mine on King Island is a real operating project with a JORC reserve of 4.43 Mt at 0.92% WO₃ and a design nameplate of roughly 275,000 MTU WO₃ per year, and it achieved commercial production back in July 2023. H1 FY2026 (July–December 2025) was its best half yet, with 43,468 MTU produced (up 68% year‑on‑year) but still well short of nameplate on an annualised basis. More recently it has reported continuing improvements in grade and plant performance and has extended an offtake with Traxys covering at least 10,000 t of WO₃ in concentrate at market‑linked prices.

The mix of real progress, real production, but persistent shortfall versus design is why I keep Group 6 as a warning. Being one of the very few western tungsten producers doesn’t immunise you against balance‑sheet stress or recapitalisation if the economics or ramp‑up fall short. Dolphin shows that a project can be strategic and still need rescue financing if things go wrong.

For tungsten plays, I don’t really recommend it: it’s there to remind me that resource quality and strategic importance are necessary but not sufficient. You still need the right capital structure, the right execution, and the right entry price.

Basket Strategy

If I were building a tungsten basket today, I’d still split it into three sleeves, but I’d be more explicit about who sits where.

The first sleeve would be lower‑risk core names with real or near‑term production and clearer balance‑sheet visibility: EQ Resources (with a funding‑headroom warning), Almonty, Masan, Tungsten West and now Allied Critical Metals after its US$40m financing and Q4 2026 production target. These are the companies where I expect tungsten prices and operational delivery to show up in cash flow within the 2026–2028 window.

The second sleeve would be developers with genuine potential but obvious execution and timeline risk: American Tungsten with a small amount of Guardian Metal, Fireweed, Tungsten Mining NL and Elmet as a downstream “picks and shovels” name now that it’s listed. The third sleeve would remain pure speculation: Great Western and any other early explorers where the resource is still being proved out and the main value driver is the drill bit.

In this kind of market, I’d lean more toward waiting for clear de‑risking events than trying to front‑run them. You will get burned easily as we’ve seen in October 2025. EQ’s March quarter and Group 6’s slow ramp are good reminders that being early is not always the same as being early to actual cash flow. You can still be plenty early a day after a feasibility study, a financing close or a commissioning milestone if the entry price is reasonable and the story is not yet crowded.

What Could Break the Thesis

The biggest macro risk is that industrial demand slows and tungsten prices roll over faster than wallstreet expect. A significant global downturn in manufacturing, or a sudden easing of Chinese export controls (especially the next Trump/Xi meeting), could take a lot of air out of APT prices and shrink the margin of safety for producers and developers alike. Another risk is that ex‑China supply ramps faster than anticipated (Sangdong, Hemerdon, Nui Phao expansion, Vila Verde/Borralha, Mt Mulgine in the 2030s) which would soften the supply shortage.

Company‑specific risks are the usual mining list: capex blowouts, dilution, plant issues, tricky metallurgy, permitting friction and community pushback. We already have live case studies of most of these between Group 6’s slower‑than‑hoped ramp, EQ’s weather‑hit quarter and tight funding, and the long gestation periods at Mt Mulgine and Mactung.
Even the best Tier 1 companies can go badly if the execution window is missed (which is the standard, not the expection in this sector…).

A company can be essential to western tungsten supply and still be a bad stock at a given price if the market already discounts near‑perfect execution. It is better to wait for another sector-wide pullback than FOMO.

Closing Thoughts

Tungsten is finally getting the attention you would expect for a metal that is this hard to substitute and this central to defense, high‑end manufacturing and now AI‑adjacent hardware. Chinese concentration, record APT prices, and real western supply projects crossing key milestones in 2026 all support the idea that this is a sector with serious multi-bagger potential over the 2026–2030 window.

But that alone doesn’t mean every tungsten stock is a winner. Some stocks are already expensive, some are still years from production, and some sit on fragile balance sheets where a single bad quarter can force a painful dilution. But in general, I still think tungsten offers one of the more interesting asymmetric setups left on the board: a small set of assets that genuinely matter, a policy that is unusually supportive, and a market that is only just starting to figure out how to value the space. For me, that’s enough to justify an investment - as long as I keep track about the risk and remember that geology is only half the battle.

Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. It is my research and opinion on a sector that is finally getting the attention it has long lacked but remain cautious if you decide to invest.

A lot has happened in the last few months. Oil has spiked and stayed elevated due to the Iran war, while miners are suffering due to higher CapEx.

Our favorite gold miner is no exception. In addition, they recently released important news that impacted the stock price. This post serves as a follow-up.

Read more

Industry Highlights

Upstream

• MP Materials faces commercial-scale magnet production delays with true commissioning now approaching 2028, while feedstock and separation challenges suggest peers like USA Rare Earth also won’t achieve scale before 2028.
  -- Read More

• Meteoric Resources outlined Brazil’s Caldera project, which contains ~1.5 billion tonnes at ~2,300 ppm ionic clay rare earths. They are targeting 13,500 tpa production by 2028 with a $450M capex.
  -- Read More

• Saga Metals acquired the Wolverine REE Project in Labrador, featuring 24-28% heavy rare earth content (including dysprosium and terbium), though the deal involves significant equity dilution without proven metallurgy or processing partnerships.
  -- Read More

• Critical Metals Corp secured 92.5% ownership of Greenland’s Tanbreez rare earth project with first production targeted for 2028-2029, though the commercial-scale processing of its eudialyte ore remains unproven.
  -- Read More

• China released a comprehensive seabed geochemical atlas mapping rare earths across 20,000+ observation points in eastern waters, providing a strategic exploration advantage—though deep-sea extraction viability remains commercially unproven.
  -- Read More

• Kazakhstan positions itself as a strategic U.S. partner for critical minerals with $17B in new agreements and a flagship tungsten project backed by Cove Capital, though midstream processing capacity remains highly limited.
  -- Read More

• North Carolina State University developed a non-destructive fluorescence method to detect dysprosium in living plants, advancing the long-term potential of phytomining rare earths from contaminated sites.
  -- Read More

• The Liaoning Provincial Geological and Mineral Investment Development Group announced a five-year plan to launch over 100 exploration projects and bring 3-5 new mining operations online, reinforcing China’s domestic critical mineral control.
  -- Read More

Midstream

• MP Materials and other Western projects won’t reach meaningful separation scale until 2030+ despite billions in policy support, as China maintains ~90% control of global rare earth refining built on 30+ years of operational mastery.
  -- Read More

• China Northern Rare Earth reports strong Q1 2026 earnings while aggressively advancing its vertical integration from mining to permanent magnets, supported by 617 patents and tighter state controls.
  -- Read More

• Vulcan Elements plans a $1 billion magnet facility in North Carolina. U.S. capacity could theoretically approach 30,000 tons annually by 2030, but Western production faces structurally higher costs compared to China.
  -- Read More

• A University of Texas study reveals that while battery metals are mined globally, real control is heavily concentrated in East Asian processing hubs, giving China weaponized interdependence to throttle entire industries.
  -- Read More

• Daikin Industries leads a Japanese consortium to recover neodymium magnets from AC compressors, targeting commercial recycling operations by 2027 to reduce dependence on China.
  -- Read More

• 5N Plus operates closed-loop germanium recycling with U.S. funding to scale recovery from residues, as the industry shifts toward a circular economy from optical scrap and semiconductor waste.
  -- Read More

• DARPA launched its Smash program to extract nearly all usable elements from ore and waste streams, though the concept currently lacks proven cost curves or throughput data against established solvent extraction methods.
  -- Read More

Downstream

• Tesla maintains its ambition to eliminate rare earths from EV motors but acknowledged that China’s recent export controls disrupted Optimus robot production, confirming its ongoing heavy reliance on magnets.
  -- Read More

• Leju Robotics opened Shenzhen’s first humanoid robot pilot production line with a 500-1,000 unit capacity, heavily leveraging China’s 90%+ dominance in magnet production.
  -- Read More

• GKN Powder Metallurgy halted a major European magnet project, underscoring that investment alone does not create viable markets when buyers only accept premium pricing after a supply disruption begins.
  -- Read More

• Lockheed Martin and other defense primes operate fragmented ERP systems that fail to track element-level constraints and midstream chokepoints critical for DFARS 2027 compliance, according to a new PwC analysis.
  -- Read More

Other News

• Donald Trump will travel to China in April 2026 amid a temporary rare earth détente expiring in November 2026, with Beijing maintaining strict refining control through export licensing rather than free trade.
  -- Read More

• U.S. House Democrats launched document requests targeting Trump-era mine-to-magnet deals involving MP Materials and USA Rare Earth, though no subpoenas have been enforced yet. Simultaneously, Congress proposed a bipartisan $2.5B Strategic Resilience Reserve.
  -- Read More

• Project Vault aims to deploy $10-12 billion to build a U.S. strategic stockpile of critical minerals, though critics argue it merely creates demand without solving real bottlenecks in separation, metallization, or magnet manufacturing.
  -- Read More

• The World Bank Group and five other MDBs issued a joint declaration supporting diversified critical minerals value chains but failed to provide priority minerals, target countries, or hard funding timelines.
  -- Read More

• Brazil proposed state-owned Terrabras to manage and develop the world’s second-largest rare earth reserves, pursuing a multi-polar strategy to balance U.S., EU, and Chinese interests.
  -- Read More

• Canada is advancing a feasibility study to transform the Port of Churchill into a year-round Arctic shipping hub for critical minerals exports, utilizing routes via the Hudson Bay.
  -- Read More

Watchlist Updates (16–19 April 2026)

• USA Rare Earth (USAR):
  Market commentary this week heavily targeted the valuation disconnect in U.S. developers. USA Rare Earth is currently trading at an extreme multiple on pre-revenue operations, reflecting market pricing of geopolitical optionality rather than industrial fundamentals. Furthermore, analysts noted that feedstock and separation challenges suggest USA Rare Earth won’t achieve scale before 2028. Finally, House Democrats have initiated document requests regarding the $1.6B Trump-era rare earth funding arrangements awarded to the company.

• Energy Fuels (UUUU):
  Energy Fuels officially released its 2025 Sustainability Report on April 16, detailing environmental stewardship, safety, and governance metrics covering 2024–2025. Additionally, the company filed its proxy statement (DEF 14A) on April 17, confirming their annual shareholder meeting for June 24, 2026, and confirming the executive pay structures under incoming CEO Ross Bhappu.

• NioCorp Developments (NB):
  Riding the momentum of last week’s Traxys offtake term sheet—which sent the stock up nearly 29% earlier this month—NioCorp announced that CEO Mark A. Smith will participate in Maxim Group’s “Mining The Industrial Supply Chain” virtual conference on April 21, 2026. The company will use the platform to discuss the Elk Creek Project, Project Vault, and new capital availability for U.S. domestic supply chains.

“It is the only ETF providing focused pure-play exposure to rare earths companies. The ETF invests exclusively in companies outside of China that may have significant growth potential as supply chain security becomes a national priority. REXC seeks to provide investment results that, before fees and expenses, correspond generally to the total return performance of the Nasdaq Sprott Rare Earths Ex-China™ Index (NSREXC™). The Index is designed to track the performance of a selection of global securities in the rare earths industry, including mining, separation, refining or production of rare earths.“

Official link: https://sprottetfs.com/rexc-rare-earths-ex-china-etf/
Factsheet: https://sprottetfs.com/media/wnzpr0id/rexc-factsheet.pdf
Presentation deck: https://sprottetfs.com/media/h3oooroq/rexc-investor-presentation.pdf

Who Is Sprott?

If you’re new to Sprott, here’s the short version: they are one of the most respected names in hard asset and resource investing. They’ve been running exchange-traded products tied to precious metals and critical materials for years, and they actually understand the sector well. For example, they have a Junior Gold Miners ETF or the Junior Uranium Miners ETF .

That credibility matters in rare earths especially, because this space is technically complex, geopolitically sensitive, and very different from a standard equity ETF. Having a sponsor that knows the difference between neodymium and cerium isn’t a given.

What REXC Is Built Around

The core idea behind $REXC is simple: China dominates rare earth mining, separation, and refining. That creates a strategic risk for Western governments, defense contractors, and industrial buyers. So Sprott built an ETF around the companies working to fix that. (see our previous post about critical minerals here)

REXC tracks the Nasdaq Sprott Rare Earths Ex-China Index, and only includes companies outside China involved in mining, refining, separating, or producing rare earths. It launched on April 14, 2026, carries a management fee of 0.65%, and holds 34 companies at launch.

The Holdings

The basket is concentrated at the top, which is probably what you’d expect given how few serious ex-China rare earth producers there actually are.

They explain their holdings like this:

1. Pure-Play Exposure to Rare Earths – The only ETF focused on companies that generate a majority of revenue from the mining, separation, refining or production of rare earths.

2. Strategic Importance – Rare earths are critical to global defense systems, energy and electrification, AI and datacenters, semiconductors, robotics, EVs, and advanced technologies.

3. Supply Chain Security – China’s dominance and past export controls have made rare earths a national security priority. This is spurring ex-China investment and opportunities, critical materials alliances and funding for strategic stockpiling by developed nations around the world.

4. Well-Positioned Companies – Companies focused on the rare earths supply chain may be well-positioned to benefit from the increased investment in national security priorities.

Concentration

If we take a look at the concentration, we can see that about half of them are ASX stocks:

ASX stocks have not been performing very well compared to US or Canadian companies - for no real reason. This is something to consider if you decide to invest in it.

Additionally, it is surprising to see such a small Canada stake of 7.66%. There are many good companies on Canada’s side.

Detailed Holdings

We can also see that roughly half of the ETF is essentially made up of Lynas (ASX: LYC) and MP Materials .
Not exactly what you would expect from a diversified ETF…
Our guess is, this is likely due to the lack of other large-scale players capable of carrying meaningful weightings. The sector is still spinning up, with many companies aiming to move into production by 2027.

On the third place is the infamous , which recently received investment from the U.S. government in exchange for an equity stake. The deal has been criticized by many, as the terms are questionable, and price action wasn’t the best either - so not a big fan of it.
EDIT: USAR just had a big announcment about an acquisition which puts them in a more positive light

Interesting to see is how Arafura $ARU has a big ~5% weight. It is still well below the October highs and only slowly crawling back. The reason for the weighting is probably due to Gina Rinehart’s connections and her close connections to Trump.
She is Australia’s richest woman and has many substantial investments.

Other than these companies, there are some lesser-known names that are not of much interest to us right now.

Now to the most interesting part:

Our favorite midstream play Ucore Rare Metals $UURAF $UCU received a nice weight of 2.51%! This is a nice surprise which will help the stock price over the next few months. Ucore is still traded OTC in the US which prevents most institutions from investing in it. The ETF gives institutional investors a way to invest, completely bypassing the OTC limitations.

It is also nice to see Ucore’s partnership companies Meteoric Resources and Hastings Technology Metals $HAS, albeit with a lower weight.

Another favorite is Neo Performance Materials with a decent 3.75% stake. They are the only real midstream / refining player in Europe.

Energy Fuels was expected, however the weight is quite low compared to other companies with higher risk: looking at you .

Which Rare Earths Matter Most

The investor presentation makes an important point: rare earths are a group of 17 chemically similar elements, but they do not all matter equally for every end market. For defense and high-performance magnets, the most important demand cluster is typically around neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium, and samarium.

The presentation also logically separates REEs into light rare earths and heavy rare earths, and notes that the hardest part of the business is often separation and refining, not just mining. That is exactly why the focus is on ex-China supply: the bottleneck is not only the ore body, but the midstream processing capacity controlled by China (~91%) as we have mentioned many times in previous posts.

Rare Earths

What Is Not Included

REXC is about rare earths, not the full critical minerals universe. So many companies that we would consider favorites are not in scope here if they are not REE-focused.

That means antimony, tungsten and more are excluded by design. So companies like $UAMY for antimony, or tungsten plays such as $TUNGF and EQ Resources , are not part of this ETF because they are critical minerals, but not rare earths. This distinction matters, because some traders will see the word “critical” and assume everything strategic is included, when in fact this fund is much narrower.

Comparison With Other ETFs

REXC is not the first rare earths ETF, but the first EX-China REE ETF. The most obvious comparison is VanEck’s REMX, which is the better-known rare earth and strategic metals ETF. is much larger, with about $2.96 billion in net assets, a 0.58% expense ratio, and a long track record going back to 2010.

The big difference is in the portfolio construction. REMX is a broader rare earth and strategic metals fund, and its holdings include names like Albemarle, Pilbara Minerals, SQM, Ganfeng Lithium, Xiamen Tungsten, Almonty, UAMY, and others, so it is not a pure rare earths fund, in addition to including many Chinese names. REXC, by contrast, is much more focused: it only includes companies outside China that are tied directly to rare earth mining, separation, refining, or production.

A second comparison is Sprott’s own critical materials ETF, .
That fund is broader than REXC and is built around the wider critical materials theme, so it is useful if you want exposure beyond rare earths. In practice, that means SETM is the more diversified strategic materials play, while REXC is the narrower, cleaner rare earths trade. It has performed quite well but it also includes Chinese companies and some silver miners.

TL;DR: Compared with REMX, REXC is much more focused. REMX is the older and larger fund, but it is not a pure rare earths vehicle as it includes strategic metals, a broader mix of names and quite a few Chinese companies. REXC is narrower, cleaner, and more directly tied to the ex-China rare earth supply-chain thesis. If you want broader critical minerals exposure, funds like SETM make more sense. If you want pure rare earths exposure, REXC is the more precise choice.

• $REXC

  • Focus: Ex-China rare earths only

  • Key difference: Pure-play rare earth exposure, no China, no broad critical minerals basket.

• $REMX

  • Focus: Rare earths and strategic metals

  • Key difference: Broader basket, larger fund, includes non-REE strategic minerals and even some China exposure in holdings.

• $SETM

  • Focus: Broader critical materials

  • Key difference: Better if you want a wider strategic minerals mix rather than only rare earths.

Yet the immediate execution still largely belongs to Beijing: China Northern Rare Earth continues to post surging profits on disciplined cost control, China officially became a net exporter of industrial robots, and regulators extended the suspension of rare earth export controls through November 2026. This move keeps Western defense supply chains breathing but fully preserves Beijing’s leverage, anchoring global pricing with a rare earth price index sitting elevated at 271.8.

Industry Highlights

Upstream

• Rare Earths Americas has filed for an IPO on the NYSE American under the ticker REA, seeking capital to fund U.S. and Brazilian heavy rare earth projects, prominently featuring Georgia’s high-grade Shiloh deposit boasting up to 20.01% TREO.
  -- Read More

• Brazil has mandated that foreign companies process rare earth minerals domestically rather than export raw materials, leveraging its 10% share of global critical mineral reserves to capture more value down the chain.
  -- Read More

• Hancock Prospecting retains full Hope Downs ownership and operational control, preserving its broader rare earth diversification plans despite a court-ordered royalty-sharing decision with Wright family heirs.
  -- Read More

• Earlier this week, Hancock Prospecting was noted building strategic, non‑controlling minority stakes across the ex‑China rare earth supply chain—from mining right through to magnets.
  -- Read More

• Brazil holds 23.3% of global rare earth reserves but continues to struggle with fragmented governance; federal mining approvals do not guarantee necessary state or local environmental clearances, routinely stretching project timelines to 10–20 years.
  -- Read More

• Ramaco Resources’ lawsuit against a former executive over alleged theft of rare earth trade secrets highlights the talent vulnerability in the U.S. supply chain, where specialized processing knowledge remains scarce.
  -- Read More

• China Northern Rare Earth Group expects its Q1 2026 net profit to hit $125–131M USD (up 109–118% YoY), building on a 2025 net profit of $313M, driven by strengthening prices and relentless operational execution.
  -- Read More

• The African Development Bank is backing the Nacala Corridor (spanning Mozambique, Malawi, and Zambia) as a next‑generation critical minerals model, aiming to capture more midstream value locally through integrated logistics and governance.
  -- Read More

• Tronox has attracted up to $600M in non‑binding government financing to develop a rare earth processing circuit from monazite byproducts, leveraging its mineral‑separation expertise despite $3B in debt and 9x leverage.
  -- Read More

• In a broader push, the U.S. and Australia pledged over $3.5 billion to accelerate critical minerals projects—including the Tronox funding—though critics note that without industrial‑scale solvent extraction, Australia remains reliant on Chinese separation.
  -- Read More

Midstream

• KIGAM researchers have identified a stable operating window for Vietnam bastnaesite processing at a neutral pH with moderate reagent dosage, achieving a 49.7% TREO concentrate at 87.8% recovery.
  -- Read More

• Australia continues to expand its rare earth processing capacity—including involvement from the Perth Mint—but lacks domestic magnet manufacturing, creating a risky intermediary position dependent on Asian buyers.
  -- Read More

• Neo Performance Materials stands out as one of the only ex‑China platforms spanning rare earth separation through to magnet production, having just achieved first production of terbium and dysprosium at its Silmet facility in Estonia.
  -- Read More

• Aclara Resources published technical studies for an integrated heavy rare earth supply chain moving from Brazil and Chile to a separation facility in Louisiana, modeling a combined NPV of $2.334B but requiring $1.2B in upfront capex.
  -- Read More

• Mkango Resources, via subsidiaries HyProMag and Mkango UK, won UK DRIVE35 funding for the £6.5M REACT‑UK project aimed at developing a localized, circular NdFeB magnet supply chain for electric vehicles.
  -- Read More

• Western producers are attempting to build roughly 30,000 tonnes of annual NdFeB magnet capacity by 2030, but these targets are running into critical bottlenecks regarding skilled engineers and continuous manufacturing expertise.
  -- Read More

• Baogang Steel Group won a contract to supply rare earth–enhanced bridge steel for a major Tibet infrastructure project, engineered for extreme altitude and permafrost conditions.
  -- Read More

• Baogang was also approved to lead the development of China’s 2026 national standard for measuring rare earths and niobium in iron ore using X‑ray fluorescence spectrometry.
  -- Read More

• Paladin Envirotech partnered with PSV Eindhoven as its Technology Recycling Partner through 2029, positioning IT asset recycling as a critical localized pathway to recover tech metals.
  -- Read More

Downstream

• China officially became a net exporter of industrial robots in 2025, with exports surging 48.7%—a profound shift signaling its transition from a follower to a dominant leader in global manufacturing automation.
  -- Read More

• China’s Commerce Ministry strongly opposed the UK’s decision to exclude Mingyang Smart Energy turbines from British offshore wind projects on national security grounds, warning it undermines free market principles.
  -- Read More

• The U.S. Navy has increased its Tomahawk missile procurement by 1,200%, exposing massive critical vulnerabilities given that China controls 90%+ of the rare earth processing required for precision guidance systems.
  -- Read More

Other News

• China’s rare earth price index has crept up and sits at 271.8, maintained firmly through state quotas and export controls rather than true spot dynamics, anchoring global pricing despite Western independence efforts.
  -- Read More

• The U.S. Treasury has accused China of stockpiling oil amid a $100 price surge rather than stabilizing markets, echoing the strategic, state-coordinated behavior historically seen in rare earths and adding upward pressure to global processing costs.
  -- Read More

• A structural warning out this week notes the United States is facing an AI infrastructure bubble that sits alongside profound China dependency for rare earth processing, requiring strategic discipline on supply chain choke points rather than scattered subsidies.
  -- Read More

• In earlier news, China suspended its rare earth export controls through November 10, 2026, a move that temporarily stabilizes Western supply chains while firmly maintaining strategic leverage.
  -- Read More

• The Trump Administration allocated $13B for critical minerals and rare earths, but a CSIS analysis highlights that this funding remains fragmented and that policies like rolling back EV incentives are actively undermining demand signals.
  -- Read More
  -- Read More

• The South China Morning Post highlighted that U.S. rare earth ambitions face a critical workforce shortage; decades of offshoring have hollowed out domestic expertise in specialized processing like solvent extraction.
  -- Read More

• African nations are increasingly exercising strategic agency in critical minerals markets, rejecting passive narratives and mandating local beneficiation to counter China’s processing dominance.
  -- Read More

• China Northern Rare Earth Group launched a 2026 legal governance agenda that embeds compliance into its core operations, establishing a structural framework ahead of China’s 15th Five‑Year Plan cycle.
  -- Read More

• Xi Jinping met with Taiwan’s KMT senior figure Zheng Liwen—the first publicly reported high‑level cross‑strait engagement in roughly a decade—reinforcing Beijing’s established framework for dialogue.
  -- Read More

Watchlist Updates (13–15 April 2026)

• USA Rare Earth (USAR):
  Shares saw minor upward momentum in the middle of the week, rising 4% to hit highs of $17.05 on April 13 on slightly below-average volume. This action followed last week’s news detailing a potential €40 million Carester stake and considerations for a magnet plant in southern France to anchor a European supply node. CEO Barbara Humpton was also on the wire last week defending the structure of their $1.6B U.S. funding package in front of Congress.

• Neo Performance Materials (NEO):
  Neo stands out across the midstream newsflow this week after achieving the first production of separated terbium and dysprosium at its Silmet facility in Estonia. The company is now operating one of the only commercial ex‑China platforms spanning from heavy rare earth oxide separation straight through to magnet production. The market is increasingly noticing this unique vertical integration and its strong alignment with European supply chain autonomy.

• Mkango Resources (MKA):
  Mkango, via its subsidiaries HyProMag and Mkango UK, secured UK DRIVE35 funding to anchor the £6.5 million REACT‑UK project. Designed to accelerate a localized, circular supply chain that recycles NdFeB magnets directly back into electric vehicle motors, this move continues Mkango’s push into closing the loop on critical materials in Europe.

• Aclara Resources (ARA):
  Aclara published technical studies detailing an ambitious, fully integrated heavy rare earth supply chain linking ionic clay mining in Brazil and Chile with a centralized separation facility planned for Louisiana. The combined project models out to an attractive NPV of $2.334 billion, but it faces a steep hurdle: an estimated $1.2 billion in upfront capital expenditure before it can become operational, keeping the focus tightly on their government and strategic financing efforts.

• Energy Fuels (UUUU):
  The company confirmed its current CEO Mark Chalmers is managing the transition of leadership which goes into effect on April 15, 2026. Energy Fuels is maintaining its 2026 guidance as it continues critical test work and process design ahead of major scaling up in its Phase-2 White Mesa expansion.

Industry Highlights

Upstream

• The U.S. and China are keeping rare earth diplomacy pragmatic ahead of the Trump‑Xi summit, with the U.S. Trade Representative reiterating that America still relies on China for roughly 80% of its rare earth imports despite escalating trade and tech tensions.
  -- Read More

• USA Rare Earth’s equity story is now anchored by a $1.5 billion PIPE financing and a proposed $1.6 billion U.S. government funding package, but the company remains pre‑revenue with substantial accumulated losses and still has to prove the Round Top mine’s economics at scale.
  -- Read More

• Miotal has announced a SPAC merger, claiming independently verified inventories of ultrafine copper powder and rare‑earth metals, yet has not disclosed detailed storage‑stability data or binding customer contracts—leaving a large due‑diligence gap between lab validation and bankable economics.
  -- Read More

• Chilean Cobalt Corp is advancing its NeoRe ionic‑clay project in Chile with heavy rare‑earth content (including dysprosium and terbium), but the asset is still early in resource definition rather than anywhere near construction‑ready production.
  -- Read More

• The China Rare Earth Industry Association has conducted strategic visits to Ganzhou’s heavy‑rare‑earth hub, reinforcing tightly coordinated state oversight across mining, separation, and manufacturing, and effectively preserving China’s ~98% control of heavy‑rare‑earth refining.
  -- Read More

• Ramaco Resources has filed a trade‑secrets lawsuit against former executive Alex Moyes, alleging he emailed more than 40 confidential rare‑earth documents to a personal account before joining USA Rare Earth—illustrating how IP leakage and talent wars can jeopardize America’s rare‑earth rebuild.
  -- Read More

• China Northern Rare Earth and Baotou Steel Union have reset Q2 2026 concentrate prices to 38,804 yuan/ton under a standing formula, showing how China uses structured pricing mechanisms—not just ad‑hoc controls—to govern upstream margins.
  -- Read More

• Lindian Resources has raised $100 million to push Malawi’s Kangankunde toward debt‑free MREC production by Q4 2026, but its intermediate rare‑earth carbonate/oxide will almost certainly still need separation in external facilities, which today remain overwhelmingly Chinese.
  -- Read More

• Central Asia is transitioning from geopolitical buffer to strategic prize as its rare‑earth and battery‑metal deposits attract competing Chinese and Western investment, with rail corridors and political alignment now as important as geology.
  -- Read More

Midstream

• USA Rare Earth has signed a non‑binding term sheet to take a minority stake in French separator Carester SAS, gaining rights to part of its oxide output, access to separation IP, and a pathway for heavy‑rare‑earth feed from Round Top—de‑risking midstream exposure even as the mine remains unbuilt.
  -- Read More

• Reuters reports that USA Rare Earth is now considering building a magnet plant in France, alongside its Carester stake, to anchor a European mine‑to‑magnet hub that would complement its Stillwater (Oklahoma) line and partially hedge U.S. permitting and DFARS risk.
  -- Read More

• HyProMag GmbH (Mkango’s subsidiary) has completed first commissioning runs of its commercial HPMS vessel in Pforzheim, Germany, at a site designed for 100–750 t/y of NdFeB magnet and alloy recovery, with scale‑up and actual unit economics still to be proven.
  -- Read More

• Beijing University of Technology researchers have demonstrated lab‑scale recycling that recovers about 95% of NdFeB magnet waste with near‑original performance via grain‑boundary reconstruction, but the methodology still lacks industrial‑scale validation under real impurity conditions.
  -- Read More

• China is pushing a closed‑loop “Two Rare Earth Bases” strategy to scale recycling, yet secondary feed currently supplies only around 1% of global magnet materials, highlighting how aspirational circular‑economy targets remain.
  -- Read More

• Neo Performance Materials has commissioned Europe’s first heavy‑rare‑earth separation line in Estonia, producing small volumes of dysprosium and terbium oxide for EV motors and defense applications and marking an early, sub‑scale non‑Chinese node.
  -- Read More

• Lynas Rare Earths is extending its Malaysian plant into heavy‑rare‑earth separation—demonstrating dysprosium, terbium, and samarium output—with full‑spectrum capacity targeted by late 2027 but still small today compared with Chinese peers.
  -- Read More

• China is scaling “urban mining” to recover material from e‑waste and scrap—policy documents speak of hundreds of millions of tonnes—creating a parallel secondary supply chain for rare earths and battery metals that further anchors midstream dominance.
  -- Read More

• Taken together, China controls roughly 90–91% of rare‑earth refining and 94–95% of magnet production, and about 90% of molten‑salt electrolysis capacity to convert oxides into metals, keeping Western lab‑level innovation bottlenecked at the midstream.
  -- Read More

• Yttrium is now the clearest example of a two‑tier market: export controls have pushed ex‑China prices from single digits to well over $100/kg (and up to $300/kg in some contracts) while domestic Chinese prices remain comparatively steady.
  -- Read More

• Metasorbex is developing graphene‑based separation modules as a lower‑capex alternative to China’s long solvent‑extraction banks, but technology remains at pilot stage with no commercial‑scale performance yet demonstrated.
  -- Read More

Downstream

• China’s industrial‑robot build‑out continues to accelerate: it produced 773,074 industrial robots in 2025 (up 14.7% year‑on‑year) and installed 295,000 units in 2024, turning mine‑to‑magnet dominance into mine‑to‑robot dominance across automotive, electronics, and advanced‑materials manufacturing.
  -- Read More

• China is also moving to end destructive competition in the battery sector via price discipline and capacity monitoring, aiming to stabilize margins in a strategic supply chain that underpins both domestic EV penetration and export leverage.
  -- Read More

• The Pentagon’s January 2027 DFARS deadline will effectively ban Chinese rare‑earth magnets from U.S. defense systems, triggering a scramble among primes to secure compliant supply that does not yet exist at scale and fueling aggressive hiring for “supply‑chain resilience” and critical‑minerals roles.
  -- Read More

Other News

• Rare Earth Exchanges is rolling out a milestone‑based valuation framework that prioritizes actual production and qualified offtakes over promises, and explicitly treats government support as risk‑reduction rather than guaranteed upside—pushing investors to discount pre‑revenue stories more heavily.
  -- Read More

• Brazil is calling for stronger federal security powers and a national guard after new U.S.–Paraguay defense agreements, worried that its resource‑rich territory and infrastructure corridors could become pressure points in great‑power competition.
  -- Read More

• China is deepening European ties—including a high‑profile visit to Spain—while maintaining ambiguity on rare‑earth exports; the Commerce Ministry has approved qualified civilian rare‑earth export applications through November 2026, keeping flows stable but preserving leverage.
  -- Read More

• Disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz now threaten nearly half of global seaborne sulphur trade, with prices up roughly 165% year‑over‑year, exposing hidden vulnerabilities in copper extraction, fertilisers and battery‑materials supply chains dependent on sulphuric acid.
  -- Read More

• The U.S. and EU are edging toward a coordinated critical‑minerals deal built around price guarantees and joint standards to reduce dependence on China’s integrated supply chains, though scope, enforceability, and WTO‑compatibility remain open questions.
  -- Read More

• China’s rare‑earth price index around 267–268 signals managed stability: NdPr sits near $111–113/kg while many heavy rare earths remain structurally tight, reflecting both cost‑floor support and selective demand softness.
  -- Read More

• Beijing is rolling out a coordinated campaign across talent recruitment, industrial standards, and semiconductor tax incentives to lock in its three‑decade head start from separation through magnet manufacturing, rather than just mine approvals.
  -- Read More

• U.S. operational defense spending of $1.5–1.7 trillion has yet to be meaningfully redirected into midstream critical‑minerals processing, leaving the West reliant on adversarial supply chains even as it tries to de‑risk on the demand side.
  -- Read More

• Analysts warn China may be enabling Iran’s war effort via dual‑use components and chemicals rather than overt arms shipments, demonstrating how control over upstream and midstream industrial inputs can be wielded as geopolitical leverage.
  -- Read More

• Jack Lifton—who coined “technology metals” in the early 2000s—continues to argue that refining and midstream processing, not mining tonnage, are the true supply‑chain chokepoints, a thesis now reflected in China’s overwhelming share of separation and magnet capacity.
  -- Read More

Watchlist Updates (9–12 April 2026, no MarketBeat)

• USA Rare Earth (USAR): Reuters reports that USA Rare Earth is considering a magnet plant in France after agreeing to invest €40 million (~$47M) for a 12.5% stake in French separator Carester, alongside an equal stake by InfraVia, as part of a broader plan to create a European mine‑to‑magnet hub. A separate Reuters piece has CEO Barbara Humpton defending the $1.58B Trump‑admin financing package before skeptical lawmakers, stressing that Washington would still retain an equity stake even if some funding tranches were never drawn and arguing that the structure does not compromise shareholder value.
  -- Read More

• NioCorp Developments (NB): On April 9, NioCorp announced a non‑binding term sheet with Traxys North America outlining a long‑term marketing and offtake arrangement that could place essentially 100% of Elk Creek’s planned critical‑minerals output under contract for the first 10 years of operations, once financed and built. The term sheet also contemplates a potential up to $30 million strategic equity investment from Traxys and explicitly links the trader’s role to Project Vault, the U.S. government–industry platform intended to match OEM demand with reliable critical‑minerals supply.
  -- Read More

• American Rare Earths (ARR): A GlobeNewswire release dated April 9 sets out a Wyoming‑led, three‑stage pilot‑plant pathway for Halleck Creek: milling and sizing at Western Research Institute (Laramie), mineral separation and concentration at DISA’s facilities (Casper), and final leaching/oxide refining at the Saskatchewan Research Council in Saskatoon. The company says this structure materially shortens the timeline to pre‑production separated REO, with CEO Mark Wall framing it as a “massive step forward” that could deliver high‑purity oxide within months rather than years and accelerate Halleck Creek’s path toward becoming a cornerstone U.S. rare‑earth supply.
  -- Read More

• Energy Fuels (UUUU): A new Crux Investor article dated April 10 reviews Energy Fuels’ 2025 results and 2026 guidance, noting that the company beat its 2025 uranium production guidance by ~20% (1.72M lbs vs. 1.435M lbs) and is targeting 2.0–2.5M lbs mined and 1.5–2.0M lbs sold in 2026 at long‑term contract prices around $90/lb. The piece also ties that uranium growth to the company’s first U.S. terbium‑oxide output and a planned acquisition of Australian Strategic Materials, arguing that Phase‑2 circuit expansion at White Mesa could support around 35 t/y Dy, 12 t/y Tb and up to 1,000 t/y NdPr as part of an integrated mine‑to‑alloy strategy by 2029.
  -- Read More

Industry Highlights

Midstream

• Inner Mongolia Qianshan Heavy Industry has embedded PhD researchers directly into NdFeB magnet production lines, delivering about +10% magnetic energy, +8% coercivity gains, yield rates above 95%, and annual cost savings around $200k through process and microstructure optimisation.
  -- Read More

• Luoyang Bajia Electrical Technology is scaling production of high‑spec vacuum furnaces used in rare earth magnet and advanced materials manufacturing, underlining that China’s dominance now extends deep into the processing‑equipment layer, not just ores and oxides.
  -- Read More

• The Caremag facility, scheduled to launch in late 2026, is expected to supply roughly 20% of Japan’s dysprosium and terbium needs via a Japan–France cooperation roadmap, giving Japanese magnet makers a rare non‑Chinese source of heavy rare earths.
  -- Read More

• India has notified a ₹7,280 crore (~$782M) scheme targeting 6,000 MTPA of integrated sintered NdFeB magnet capacity, with bids in 600–1,200 MTPA blocks and 25 companies (including Vedanta and Hindustan Zinc) expressing interest; the scheme combines capex support with sales‑linked incentives but still sits on a thin domestic rare‑earth separation base.
  -- Read More

• Baotou is launching a national innovation competition offering up to ¥10 million per project to rare‑earth technology start‑ups, requiring winners to set up locally within a year and cementing the city’s role as China’s rare‑earth innovation hub.
  -- Read More

• Baotou’s Rare Earth High‑Tech Zone is also fast‑tracking a ¥400M NdFeB magnet facility and a ¥2B hydrogen‑energy manufacturing base, with project timelines being compressed toward sub‑one‑year construction and ramp‑up cycles.
  -- Read More

• China is advancing 56 new rare earth standards for 2026, following a 2025 national standards conference that assembled over 150 experts, while also steering ISO rare‑earth committees—raising qualification barriers and giving Beijing outsized influence over what counts as “compliant” production globally.
  -- Read More

• International Energy Agency–linked analyses show China controlling roughly 91% of rare‑earth refining and 94% of permanent‑magnet manufacturing, and even under optimistic build‑out scenarios non‑Chinese assets are projected to meet only about 25% of refining demand by 2035.
  -- Read More

• China’s rare‑earth market shows surface stability, with light rare‑earth prices rebounding around 2.5% and heavy rare earths flattening, but the current recovery appears driven by tactical restocking and cost‑support levels rather than a broad‑based surge in end‑use demand.
  -- Read More

Downstream

• Tesla is reportedly deepening supplier engagement in China for potential mass‑production of its Optimus humanoid robot, underscoring how even frontier electromechanical systems remain structurally dependent on Chinese component and manufacturing ecosystems.
  -- Read More

• Washington’s mine‑to‑magnet initiative is running into the physics of separation: industrial flowsheets still require hundreds of sequential stages, and serious analysis now suggests 2027 DFARS traceability goals are out of sync with realistic engineering and procurement timelines.
  -- Read More

• Baogang Group has secured government funding to develop rare‑earth‑enhanced armour steel plate for armoured vehicles, tightening the coupling between China’s rare‑earth base and defence‑grade steels.
  -- Read More

• Baogang is also establishing Baotou’s first municipal industry liaison point and pursuing strategic cooperation with Harbin Boiler Works in hydrogen energy and advanced materials, positioning it as a coordinating node across multiple downstream sectors.
  -- Read More

Other News

• Henan Province is elevating industry associations into policy‑execution nodes in a push to build a “unified national market,” reducing provincial fragmentation while increasing central Party control over economic coordination and enforcement.
  -- Read More

• Export Finance Australia has been empowered—backed by A$1.2 billion and nested within a broader Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve concept—to directly purchase, stockpile and sell fuel and critical minerals, marking a shift from classic export‑credit roles into active stockpile management.
  -- Read More

• The Australia–EU critical‑minerals agreement provides tariff relief and investment frameworks, but Canberra’s own strategy documents stress that Australia remains structurally dependent on Chinese refining and separation capacity for many key materials.
  -- Read More

• China’s Foreign Ministry continues to maintain strategic ambiguity on rare‑earth export controls, signalling that “stability” in shipments is conditional on restraint from all parties and leaving room to weaponize controls in response to future sanctions or technology moves.
  -- Read More

• China Rare Earth Industry Association and related indices put the price index around 268, down from peaks above 300 but more than 2.6× the 2010 base; commentary from Rare Earth Exchanges describes “stabilisation with an upward bias” as magnet feedstocks selectively soften.
  -- Read More

• Dwayne Woods of Purdue models how China’s strategic opacity can delay Western rare‑earth diversification efforts by more than four years, cutting the probability of achieving resilient supply chains from about 95% to 48% over a 15‑year horizon.
  -- Read More

• The ongoing Iran conflict is exposing how supply chains themselves have become instruments of power: China benefits from discounted oil and clean‑tech exports yet remains vulnerable to chokepoints such as the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca that could disrupt energy and trade flows.
  -- Read More

Watchlist Updates

• Energy Fuels (UUUU): A new Crux Investor analysis, published April 8, dissects Energy Fuels’ recent announcement that it has produced the first kilogram of 99.9%‑pure terbium oxide in the U.S. in decades at the White Mesa Mill in Utah, using U.S.‑sourced monazite as feed. Building on the March 25 company press release and follow‑up coverage from The Northern Miner and others, the piece notes that pilot operations could scale to around 35 t/y of dysprosium and 12 t/y of terbium by 2027, with a potential second‑phase expansion by 2029 that would make UUUU a core Western supplier of heavy rare‑earth oxides into magnet supply chains.
  -- Read More

• Uranium Energy Corp (UEC): On April 8, UEC announced that it has commenced in‑situ recovery (ISR) uranium production at Burke Hollow in Texas, calling it “the world’s newest operating ISR uranium mine” and the first new U.S. ISR operation in more than a decade. The release positions Burke Hollow as part of a broader hub‑and‑spoke strategy anchored by UEC’s Hobson and Irigaray plants; combined with recent approvals to expand output at Christensen Ranch in Wyoming, the company now has two active ISR platforms and a staged, unhedged growth plan that management argues is aligned with U.S. fuel‑security and nuclear‑revival policy.
  -- Read More

• USA Rare Earth (USAR): An April 8 eToro/MarketScreener update shows USA Rare Earth as the second‑largest riser globally in terms of new retail holders on the platform, with a 59% increase in investors holding the stock over the quarter, behind only Chevron. This surge in retail positioning is framed against Washington’s planned $1.6 billion government stake for a 10% equity position, and USA Rare Earth’s mine‑to‑magnet ambitions at Round Top (Texas) and Stillwater, but the note cautions that many traders are buying the strategic story rather than properly underwriting hydromet, SX and magnet‑ramp execution risk.
  -- Read More

Industry Highlights

Midstream

• Fraunhofer Institute study argues Europe must build circular economy through advanced electrochemical recycling technologies achieving ~98% lithium selectivity, though most remain at early development stages (TRL 5-6) without full industrial validation. -- Read More

• China maintains 98% gallium and 67% germanium production dominance, and its 2023 export controls showed how easily Beijing can weaponize these flows into advanced semiconductors and defense systems.
  -- Read More

• U.S. mine-to-magnet projects are running into 1–2 year delays driven by grid and equipment bottlenecks, with power transformer lead times stretching to 36–60 months and Cleveland-Cliffs still the only domestic producer of electrical steel.
  -- Read More

• Southeast Asian MREC production is emerging as an alternative midstream processing pathway, with integrated mine‑to‑magnet projects in the region attracting increasingly concentrated capital while Chinese leverage over established supply chains persists.
  -- Read More

• Aclara Resources is working with Argonne National Laboratory on an AI‑enabled “digital twin” for heavy rare earth solvent extraction, targeting the scale‑up failure point that has historically killed most ex‑China projects.
  -- Read More

Downstream

• Amazon is introducing a 3.5% fuel surcharge for FBA sellers from April 17 as U.S. diesel prices spike about 40% to $5.533 per gallon, pushing logistics‑driven cost inflation deeper into e‑commerce and consumer goods.
  -- Read More

• U.S. defense contractors face a January 2027 DFARS deadline that will require full mine‑to‑magnet traceability for rare‑earth content, while most U.S.‑funded projects will not be operational until 2028–2030, leaving a critical supply gap and heightened False Claims Act risk.
  -- Read More

Other News – 6 April

• China is leveraging its 90% control of rare earth supply chains to enable lower‑cost actors such as Iran to field precision weapons that challenge technologically superior forces, reinforcing how minerals policy now shapes the balance of power in “Great Powers Era 2.0.”
  -- Read More

• The U.S. government is tying billions in health‑sector aid to African nations in exchange for access to critical minerals like copper and cobalt; Zimbabwe has publicly rejected roughly $300M in offers as “lopsided,” while Kenya and Nigeria have signed undisclosed agreements.
  -- Read More

• Cambridge researchers have developed a “Google Maps for mineral risk,” combining satellite imagery with ESG and infrastructure data to show that transport corridors—not the mines themselves—are the biggest disruption points for southern African supply chains.
  -- Read More

Watchlist Updates (5–6 April)

• NioCorp Developments (NB): A new AGM results release dated April 6, 2026 (CENTENNIAL, CO / ACCESS Newswire) details voting outcomes from NioCorp’s 2025 Annual General Meeting held that day in Denver. Shareholders elected six directors (Tony Fulton, Nilsa Guerrero‑Mahon, Dean Kehler, Michael Maselli, Peter Oliver and Mark A. Smith), re‑appointed Deloitte & Touche as auditor, approved a non‑binding say‑on‑pay vote, adopted an amended fixed‑pool long‑term incentive plan authorizing up to 11.3 million shares for equity awards, and extended the shareholder rights plan through the 2027 AGM. The associated Form 8‑K confirms this as a new material event disclosure (Items 1.01, 3.03, 5.02, 5.07 and 9.01), distinguishing it from the older 2025 AGM‑results release and highlighting a governance and defense‑mechanism reset at the Elk Creek critical‑minerals developer.
  -- Read More

Ucore recently released its latest MD&A and financial statements for Q4 2025. The company remains pre-revenue but is on a solid path toward generating its first revenue, even with delays.
A comparison of Ucore’s MD&A and financial statements between Q3 2025 and year-end (Q4) 2025 reveals a significantly strengthened balance sheet and key technological milestones, but also highlights project delays and increased costs.

They pushed back a few deadlines, which was expected. Large projects like this, especially in the mining/REE sector, almost always face delays - it’s the norm, not the exception. We are now looking at full production in 2028.

Positive Developments

• Improved Liquidity: Unrestricted cash increased significantly from CAD 19.32 million in Q3 to CAD 26.12 million at year-end. Working capital massively improved from CAD 4.03 million to CAD 19.5 million, raising the current ratio from 1.24 to 3.18. From the MD&A: “Management also concluded that the Company has sufficient liquidity to meet its obligations for the next twelve months,

  considering the Company’s planned capital expenditures and exploration activities.”

  → Good. Provides 12+ months runway without dilution.

• Massive Debt Reduction: The outstanding convertible debentures of CAD 13.87 million from Q3 were fully converted into equity during Q4. Additionally, the Orca Holdings credit facility (approx. CAD 1.63 million) was fully repaid in November 2025.
  → Eliminates near-term debt maturities and balance sheet risk.
  This is just an ongoing thing and has been going for years. Johnson has been a Ucore director since 2020 and Orca is wholly owned by him.

• Capital Influx from Warrants and Options: The company recorded significant capital inflows in Q4, as proceeds from the exercise of warrants and options reached a total of CAD 25.5 million for the year, up from just under CAD 10.5 million shortly after Q3.

  → Okay. Validates shareholder confidence but creates dilution pressure.

• Successful Project Milestones: Ucore fully completed the initial project with the US Department of Defense (DoD), achieving all 10 milestones compared to 8 in Q3. Under the second, expanded DoD contract, 5 out of 20 milestones were achieved by year-end, up from just one in Q3.

  → Good. De-risks core RapidSX technology validation. Milestones are being met, but it ultimately depends on how quickly they can execute this year.

Negative Developments

• Louisiana SMC (LSMC) Delays: The timeline for the establishment of the first RapidSX machine and early production readiness at the planned Louisiana facility was pushed back from the second half of 2026 to the first half of 2027.
  To quote: “Establish early production readiness (RapidSX™ Machine No. 1 only): 2027”

  → Bad. This was supposed to be their first revenue for this year. But execution risks have always been the biggest hurdle: they are the norm in this industry, not the exception. However, we don’t like the fact that no quarter was mentioned for production readiness in 2027, signaling even further delays.

• Bokan Project Delay: The update to the Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) for the Bokan Project in Alaska, originally planned for Q4 2025, has been delayed to the first half of 2026 as more time is needed to finalize the report.

  → Okay. The Bokan Project is something for the future and not a priority at the moment.

• Cost Overruns: The gross costs for completing the initial DoD demonstration project increased from the Q3 estimate of CAD 9.75 million to approximately CAD 10.5 million at year-end due to inflation, higher operating costs, and schedule adjustments.
  → Bad. The oil situation doesn’t help, but cost overruns are very common in these kinds of projects.

• Accounting Net Loss: The company recorded a substantial net loss of CAD 39.26 million for the full year 2025. However, CAD 21.74 million of this consisted of non-cash losses from the fair value adjustment of the convertible debentures’ embedded derivatives, which was driven by the company’s rising stock price.

  → Okay. They don’t have revenue yet.

• Increasing Macro Risks: The Q4 MD&A includes heightened warnings regarding general macro risks which could unexpectedly drive up future procurement costs for feedstock, components, and equipment.

  → Bad. They are located in a free trade zone and are mostly safe from tariffs.
  But the Iran war and high oil prices may cause further delays in addition to higher costs.

Our Vision

Ucore is still on track to build a promising midstream refining facility for critical minerals. With REE prices rising and global demand growing, the company is well-positioned to take advantage of these trends and play a key role in the sustainable supply of critical minerals - especially amid rising geopolitical tensions.

Ucore ended 2025 in strong financial shape. With CAD 26 million in unrestricted cash, no remaining convertible debt, and working capital at CAD 19.5 million (current ratio 3.18), they have a solid 12+ month runway ahead without needing to raise fresh capital.

They also delivered on the first DoD contract - completing all 10 milestones - and advanced through the expanded Phase 2 (5 of 20), giving real credibility to the RapidSX technology. The CAD 25.5 million from warrant exercises shows investors backing the progress too.

The path forward centers on that first commercial RapidSX machine coming online in Louisiana by hopefully mid-2027, processing feedstock from partners like Defense Metals and Meteoric into separated REOs for magnet production.
The Bokan MRE is still far away but might provide a nice revenue boost in the future and support a vertical integration.

Tariffs and the LSMC timeline slip to 2027 present challenges, but CAD 71 million in equity and US$16.5 million more in pending DoD funding provide meaningful flexibility. Ucore has moved beyond demonstrations - now it’s all about turning plans into production.

One of the biggest worries is still the feedstock situation.
To quote the MD&A: “These changes were primarily influenced by prevailing market conditions and the Company’s ability to secure necessary feedstock,”

1. Turning MOUs into definitive agreements was planned for Q1 2026 and not a single DA happened yet.

2. The current feedstock suppliers are all still in the early stages. How will they deliver feedstock when they aren't ready yet, especially while Ucore's plant is waiting?

The good thing: compared to other companies dilution has been OK. They also have a major upside potential when they uplist to a US exchange.
Institutional interest is definitely there.

We are happy to hold the stock but their first decent revenue will probably be in 2028 instead of 2027. The potential for a 5x+ still remains though.

TL;DR Everything has shifted by about half a year.
Expect 2027 to be the first revenue year and 2028 to be the blow up year.