Asymmetric Research

Uranium: The Era of Cheap Uranium Is Over

Asymmetric Research — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 07:40:28 GMT

We turn back to uranium. In our late-July note, written after the equity sell-off, we asked whether the sector had become outright cheap and set out fair-value upsides against a $150/lb price over the next two years, with YCA as our standout on risk and reward. Since then, the stocks have rebounded, spot has moved higher, and several developments have landed that, on balance, strengthen the thesis. We also revisit a piece of the Kazakh picture that is not new but that we think the market has overlooked. This note catches up on what has changed, and what still is not priced.

EU Natural Gas: A Rude Awakening

Asymmetric Research — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 08:44:42 GMT

Back after a break, and plenty has moved in our favour while we were out. On uranium, spot has reached $90/lb as post-summer seasonality turned, helped by news of a delay to Kazatomprom’s sulphuric acid plant that strengthens the case for lower production next year. On gold, a wild run of around $600/oz since the start of the month further bolstered by the US Treasury’s bond buyback announcement, the bounce vindicating the call we made at the summer lows, though equities now look overbought. We will update on both in the coming reports. First, gas.

We have been long TTF since the start of the Iran crisis and have argued the case repeatedly since. The trade is playing out.

Nuclear: What Is Westinghouse Worth?

Asymmetric Research — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 14:30:36 GMT

Cameco announced last week that Westinghouse had submitted a draft registration statement to the US SEC for a proposed IPO. In this note we provide estimates of what we think Westinghouse is worth.

In its Q2 MD&A, Cameco offered some granular detail on the projects Westinghouse could win. The firm argues it can capture a third of global new-build nuclear capacity, excluding China, Russia and SMRs, through to 2040. It set out a pipeline for its flagship AP1000 design of up to 91 potential reactors, or up to 105 GW, worldwide.

EU Natural Gas: Russia's Closing Window

Asymmetric Research — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 10:37:53 GMT

Europe increased its imports of Russian gas by more than 10% year on year in Q2, while at the same time legislating to eliminate those imports entirely by 2027. This hands Russia considerable leverage over a continent heading into winter in worse shape than it was going into the last energy crisis.

Europe Is Weaker Than It Was in 2021

We have been writing since March about the shortfall in European gas storage injections. The position has deteriorated with almost every passing week, and we now lower our forecasts for a third time.

Uranium: Equities Valuations After the Sell-Off

Asymmetric Research — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 13:11:09 GMT

In this note we look at the valuation of uranium equities following the sell-off. URNM, the uranium equities index, has derated by more than 40% since its January peak, correcting even harder than gold equities over the same timeframe. This despite term prices rising 7% to c$95/lb, though spot has admittedly weakened by some 10% over the period. Over the past month alone, URNM is down 15%.

What the Equities Are Discounting

The sector is currently implicitly discounting a uranium price of

EU Natural Gas: Is the Market Finally Starting to Wake Up?

Asymmetric Research — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 10:34:19 GMT

TTF, the benchmark for European natural gas prices, has rebounded by 20% over the past two weeks. Importantly, around half of that move began before the recent resumption of hostilities around the Strait of Hormuz, including the attack on an LNG carrier. The market is finally beginning to focus on the storage issue we have been flagging since our March deep dive, yet politicians remain in denial. Injections have now been noticeably weak for three weeks running, and withdrawals are higher on continuous heatwaves. We remain long TTF futures.

Forecasters are now converging on our numbers.

Uranium: Cameco's Safety Buffer Used Up

Asymmetric Research — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 15:18:09 GMT

Cameco has temporarily halted mining at Cigar Lake following an acid plant failure at Orano’s McClean Lake mill, where the ore is processed. Cameco expects the mill back online within two weeks and sees no impact on 2026 guidance for now, though this remains at risk if repairs take longer than anticipated or alternative acid supply cannot be secured in time. We suspect Cameco is pursuing alternative acid supply in parallel with the repair in order to restart milling sooner and limit the risk to 2026 production guidance.

Following our report on the bridge collapse impact at McArthur River in May, we reiterate that Cameco’s 2026 guidance is hanging by a thread, both on production and spot market purchases. McArthur River resumed operations faster than we had anticipated, which limited the impact there. Now we have this.

Implications for Spot Purchases and Guidance

Gold Equities: What's Being Priced In?

Asymmetric Research — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 12:59:15 GMT

Gold continues its descent following what many interpreted as a hawkish shift from the Fed. We have written extensively on our top-down view on gold in recent reports and continue to hold that view today.

Mohamed El-Erian, top economist and Allianz chief economic advisor, has previously been spot on with his projections. He said on CNBC this week that he expects the Fed to leave rates unchanged for the remainder of this year, and that the recent correction in oil prices would likely have shifted the tone of the Fed’s last meeting had it been factored in. This contrasts with current market pricing, which still implies close to two rate hikes this year.

At time of writing, vs its January peak, gold is trading close to the midpoint between the medians of the worst peak-to-trough corrections over the last 30 years and

Do Higher Rates Really Kill Gold?

Asymmetric Research — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:17:08 GMT

Following what many interpreted as a hawkish shift from the Fed, we want to reiterate our view on what this means for gold.

The widely held belief that higher nominal rates are inherently negative for gold beyond the immediate term is, in our view, incorrect,

Gold: Buying This Correction. 3 Names We Are Adding

Asymmetric Research — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 11:30:26 GMT

Gold is under continued selling pressure today. The metal sells off regularly, around every three months. This is simply how it trades. The last significant corrections occurred in March and January.

From the January peak, gold is now down 26% at time of writing, already exceeding the drawdown seen during the 2008 financial crisis. At current levels we are only c2% away from $4,090/oz, the midpoint between the median of the worst drawdowns over the past 30 years and those over the past 50+ years.

A Gold Play on Steroids

Asymmetric Research — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 12:20:33 GMT

Nations Royalty is a Canadian-listed royalty company with two value drivers, neither of which the market is pricing in. The first is a royalty on KSM, one of the largest undeveloped gold and copper deposits in the world. A new joint venture partner, which management expects could be announced this year, would in our view act as a material re-rating catalyst for this royalty alone. The second is a strategy with no precedent in the sector: the consolidation of indigenous royalty payments across Canada into a single vehicle. The total addressable market for such payments in Canada, excluding oil and gas, is approximately USD300m per year.

The stock has no sell-side coverage. One of the co-founders of Wheaton Precious Metals remains a key shareholder and has stated publicly that Nations Royalty could prove as consequential as founding Wheaton. The market, in our view, has yet to price either driver.

In our base case at $4,300/oz gold, assuming a new KSM partnership is announced this year, we estimate 167% upside to the current share price. At 25% market share of Canadian indigenous royalties and $9,000/oz gold, the upside in our model is…

Gold Could 2-4x in 18 Months: The 1970s Inflation Parallel

Asymmetric Research — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 11:48:17 GMT

A striking correlation between today’s US CPI trajectory and the 1970s inflation cycle points to a second, larger wave ahead. Gold peaked five months before CPI in 1980. If history rhymes, maximum velocity in this gold bull market is still in front of us.

We lay out the framework, the numbers, and what it means for our positioning.

A 1970s CPI Parallel Suggests Gold’s Strongest Phase May Still Lie Ahead

A striking chart by Kobeissi Letter shows the evolution of CPI inflation in the US from 2015 until today and overlays it against its evolution from 1967 until 1978.

US CPI YoY: 2015–Present vs 1967–1983 overlay

Source: Adapted from Kobeissi Letter, BLS

The relationship between both periods is striking, and something we had overlooked. We have estimated the R2 at 75%.

Regression 1967-1978 US CPI inflation vs CPI 2015-present, monthly (Log-log )

Source: Asymmetric Research, BLS

We had believed for some time that inflation was going to re-accelerate, and our base case was that we were likely in the early stages of a 1970s analogy, one reinforced by the Iran conflict, which struck us as a clear parallel to the 1973 oil embargo. But what if that’s the wrong starting point? What if, having already lived through the first big inflation wave four to five years ago, we are now effectively in June 1978: staring at an even larger inflation surge ahead of us.

Uranium — Japan: New Nuclear Build Inevitable?

Asymmetric Research — Tue, 26 May 2026 13:46:14 GMT

Even under Japan’s conservative nuclear scenario, utilities face a c10Mlbs uranium inventory shortfall. Under a more realistic scenario, the shortfall is dramatically larger.

Japan’s Prime Minister recently stated that the country will “make utmost efforts to avoid market disruptions that were seen in the oil shock era” and “raise the ratio of nuclear and renewable energies to up to 70% from the current 30%.”

At first glance, this appears consistent with Japan’s early 2025 energy plan, which targeted renewables at 40-50% and nuclear at 20% by 2040. What remains unclear is whether the split between nuclear and renewables has shifted. Given the ongoing global energy crisis, we believe doubling down on renewables growth alone is not the answer. Pre-Fukushima, nuclear accounted for 29-30% of Japan’s electricity generation. The current crisis makes a return toward that level increasingly rational.

Base Case: 20% Nuclear by 2040

For our base case, we assume Japan holds to its existing 20% nuclear target. With total power demand forecast at c1150TWh in 2040, a 20% nuclear share implies 230TWh of nuclear generation. Assuming an 80% load factor, already generous relative to the sub-70% Japan achieved pre-Fukushima, this requires 33GW of operable nuclear capacity by 2040.

We estimate Japan’s true operable capacity at c27GW: meaningfully below the WNA’s figure (32GW). We expect two reactors at Kashiwazaki to be decommissioned as a political concession to enable restart of the remaining five. We also believe improved seismic knowledge will prevent the restarts of Tsuruga 2 and the Shika plant. The latter was located near the epicentre of the 2024 Noto earthquake, which challenged prior assumptions about seismic risk in the region.

To meet even the 20% nuclear target, on these assumptions, Japan will need to: (1) resume construction of Shimane 3 and Ohma 1 (1.4GW each), both suspended post-Fukushima; and (2) commission an additional c3.5GW of new build. There are no known legal restrictions in Japan preventing new reactor construction.

Applying pre-Fukushima inventory coverage ratios which are more conservative than Western ones, Japanese utilities would be c10Mlbs short on uranium inventories to support this base case alone.

EU Natural Gas – Lock and Reload

Asymmetric Research — Mon, 18 May 2026 16:36:02 GMT

EU natural gas injections have trended below our forecasts since the end of April, with figures strikingly weak over the past week; daily injections have marked lows for those same calendar days in at least the last eight years. We cut once again our gas storage forecasts for Europe. Since our deep dive report on European natural gas in March, we have slashed our storage forecasts for the year by 4 percentage points, foreseeing a peak in November of 75% only — at the EU’s flexed lower target — and calendar 2026 to end at c57% full, only 3 percentage points higher than at end 2021: the year that marked the start of the last energy crisis.

Uranium – Cameco Guidance Hanging by a Thread, Implications for Market Purchases

Asymmetric Research — Mon, 11 May 2026 14:36:38 GMT

Cameco’s flagship McArthur River mine and Key Lake mill are cut off. The Smoothstone River Bridge — their primary supply route — has collapsed. The firm has so far not changed guidance. But notes of possible risks. We think guidance is holding by the thread, and the spot market implications could be significant. We evaluate them here.

The bridge suffered extensive damage from recent flooding.

Bridge collapse shows extensive damage

Source: CBC

Traffic from the other flagship operation, Cigar Lake, remains unaffected for now. While McArthur River and Cigar Lake are only c50km apart by air, they use completely different road routes. But they are both in the same flood prone region. We would not overlook the risk of knock-on effects at Cigar Lake if poor weather conditions persisted. There are other bridges on that route too, and their condition is uncertain.

Uranium — Release Valve Running Dry?

Asymmetric Research — Tue, 05 May 2026 15:53:21 GMT

We do not own Cameco, but the Q1 results carry read-through for the broader uranium sector. Beyond the reiteration of production guidance, two datapoints stand out: inventory coverage is at a record low, and the terms on new product loan borrowing may be tighter than before. Together they raise a question that matters for the whole sector: is Cameco’s product loan facility — previously a release valve against spot market pressure — beginning to show limits?

The Uranium Catalyst Nobody Is Pricing In

Asymmetric Research — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 10:19:39 GMT

We believe utility restocking is rapidly becoming the central catalyst for the uranium bull case — shifting from mere optionality to a high-probability outcome over the next 3 years.

Ex-China utility uranium inventories are on track to fall to unsustainably low levels (likely below 2 years of forward coverage) by the end of this period, we estimate. In the prior major contracting cycle (2005-2010), utilities added an average of 1.5 years of inventory coverage. Global inventories were higher at the time, yet utilities still contracted aggressively.

During 2005-2010, annual long-term contracting averaged c120% of reactor requirements, with peaks near 140% in 2005, 2007, and 2010. These levels were 2.0-2.4x higher than 2025’s contracted volumes. At 120% coverage, this implies 40 Mlbs of incremental annual demand above replacement rate — and a potential swing of over 100 Mlbs versus 2025 contracting levels. Notably, contract prices have risen over the past two years despite contracting rates at only c60% of requirements. A new restocking cycle would therefore exert powerful upward pressure on prices.

Prior restocking cycle: U3o8 contracting as % of requirements vs spot and term prices

Source: Asymmetric Research, IAEA, WNA, Cameco

We do not see conversion capacity as a bottleneck for the start of a restocking cycle. In 2010, utilities contracted c250 Mlbs annually - equivalent to over 140% of conversion capacity at the time. By 2029, assuming Westinghouse’s Springfields facility in the UK (5 KtU) returns online, a similar 250 Mlbs contracting volume would represent c130% of requirements but only c120% of conversion capacity — a more comfortable ratio. Western conversion capacity as a percentage of requirements would also improve versus 2010, reflecting European reactor retirements in Germany and the UK.

Conversion capacity vs U3oU requirements and l.t contracting volumes 2010 vs 2029E. (2010 was amongst peak contracting years)

Source: Asymmetric Research

Uranium has become one of our highest-conviction longs

Separately, on the supply side, Kazakhstan’s newly approved Nuclear Industry Development Strategy, which earmarks very significant reserves for a strategic stockpile implies Kazakh production available to the market could run c20% below subsoil levels in the coming years, which utilities are certainly not pricing in.

Then, again on the demand side, in our detailed uranium report last week, we highlighted nuclear power and uranium as key beneficiaries of heightened energy security concerns in the wake of the Iran conflict. Countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, which have suffered blackouts, could dramatically reshape the global nuclear growth trajectory if they prioritize energy independence.

From Conflict to Catalyst: Uranium's Next Leg Higher

Asymmetric Research — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 16:57:02 GMT

After having been cautious early last year, we turned constructive on uranium in summer. We now turn outright bullish.

Nuclear energy: the clear winner of the Iran conflict

We believe nuclear energy will emerge as the clear winner from the Iran conflict, thanks to its unmatched energy density and proven resilience under extreme stress. Crucially, the safety of nuclear power has been validated throughout both the Iran and Ukraine conflicts: plants and facilities came under direct attack, yet critical safety functions held firm with no compromise.

A separate but important reminder came at the start of 2024, when a 7.6-magnitude
earthquake struck Japan’s Noto Peninsula, its epicentre only 60 km from the offline Shika nuclear plant. Despite sustaining some damage, the facility maintained all critical functions, including cooling and backup power. These episodes underscore nuclear’s unique ability to deliver reliable, high-density baseload power even in the most adverse geopolitical and seismic conditions.

Gold – GMining Acquisition of G2: Key Takes

Asymmetric Research — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 18:22:53 GMT

We have crunched the numbers on G Mining Ventures (TSX: GMIN, ~USD 9bn market cap) announced takeover of G2 Goldfields (~USD 2bn).

Natural Gas – Updated European Outlook After Ceasefire

Asymmetric Research — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 09:36:51 GMT

European natural gas prices (TTF) dropped below €45/MWh, with news that the US and Iran have agreed to a two-week ceasefire, which includes the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.