Rachel Lee

Canada Holds The Ultimate Energy Card In This Trade War

• Top takeaway Her central argument is that Canada holds an energy card in the trade war: the U.S. imports roughly 70% of its primary aluminum supply, and Quebec's hydroelectric-powered smelters sit at the center of that dependence.
• She notes melting aluminum requires massive uninterrupted electricity that Canada can deliver through clean, low-cost grids, while restarting legacy U.S. smelters needs years of investment, costly grid upgrades and long permitting timelines.
• She concludes that taxing Canadian metal raises the cost of essential raw materials for U.S. aerospace, automotive and defense manufacturers.
• On the metals complex, she says gold retains strong structural support while silver takes the spotlight, surging on compounding industrial deficits driven by green energy, AI infrastructure and expanding supply constraints.
• She describes two sector shifts this week: producers restructuring to carve out lower-risk Western assets and attract generalist capital, and Western governments stepping up direct critical-minerals funding with military-backed commitments to keep defense supply chains outside foreign control.

Silver takes the spotlight as compounding industrial deficits meet green energy, AI infrastructure and widening supply constraints. Canada's trade-war strength is cheap, clean hydro power: the U.S. imports roughly 70% of its primary aluminum from Quebec smelters it cannot quickly restart. Gold Fields raised its interim dividend 132% and lifted buybacks to $1.25 billion, returning over 60% of first-half free cash flow. State money is moving downstream of the mine: a $500 million U.S. DOE round funds lithium extraction, cobalt refining, graphite substitutes and battery-scrap recovery. Two porphyry stories are scaling: Corcel hit anomalous copper, gold and molybdenum at Yuma King, while Lundin Gold's Ecuador footprint hit 1.6 km along strike.

Surface-Level Strength Masks Economic Fragility + Nvidia Lost 5x BHP's Value in 8 Weeks

• Top takeaway Hosts this Chairman's Briefing episode and argues that whether the US labor market is truly stable enough to withstand persistently high interest rates is a key debate for investors as the Fed navigates its next policy moves.
• Frames the valuation gap between Nvidia and the mining sector whose materials make its processors possible, and discloses Volta Metals and Relevant Gold as partners for the episode.

The US labor market masks fragility: June added just 57,000 jobs, and unemployment fell largely because 700,000-plus people left the workforce. Volta Metals' Springer deposit in Ontario — 176 million tonnes of rare earths — sits near highways, rail, and hydro power, lowering future capital costs. Canada's Open Science and Data Platform pools government mining data in one portal, aiming to cut permit timelines that trail Australia's by six years. Nvidia shed about $1 trillion in eight weeks — roughly five times BHP's entire value — while miners trade at 13 times forward earnings versus Nvidia's 20. Relevant Gold secured a five-year permit for up to 110 drill pads at Bradley Peak, Wyoming, and launched a 5,000-7,000 metre drill program.

Don't Mistake Gold’s Weakness For a Dead Bull Run + Codelco Under Operational Meltdown

• Top takeaway She argues gold's recent price drop is a healthy reset rather than a market crash, so reading it as a dead bull run is a misreading of the tape as of mid-July 2026.
• She treats Bank of America's warning that US equity speculation is at its most extreme since the 1999-2000 dot-com bubble as the setup for a wealth rotation into hard assets, the historical trigger for gold's longest bull run.
• She sees a hawkish Federal Reserve as a short-term headwind but argues America's rising debt level makes another aggressive rate-hiking cycle unlikely.
• She reads gold holding a consolidation floor around $4,100 an ounce as the quiet before that rotation rather than as weakness.
• She flags that data centres will drive a major surge in copper demand, and points to Codelco's debt and operational crisis as evidence that the world's largest copper supplier is under strain.

MKS Pamp keeps a $4,500 average gold forecast and $5,800 bull case, calling the dip toward $4,100 a healthy reset. Bank of America analysts say US equity speculation matches 1999-2000 extremes, the setup that last rotated capital into gold. Codelco, the world's largest copper supplier, faces 28-year-low output, $25 billion of debt, and calls for private capital. Ottawa's planned $100 million into Teck's Trail smelter targets germanium, which China supplies at over 80% of global output. De Beers is cutting rough diamond prices and dropping 25 buyers, pressuring Anglo American to consider offloading the unit.

The Copper Crunch is Stripping Refiners of Power | Chairman's Briefing

• Top takeaway She argues equity financing for junior miners is seeing a shift in participant profiles, as conservative institutional buyers take positions in development-stage industrial mineral projects.
• She highlights junior developers bypassing traditional bank debt — with rates staying high — in favor of streaming and royalty agreements that trade a fixed share of future production for upfront cash without immediate shareholder dilution.
• She frames the copper smelter fee standoff, including Antofagasta's spot-index proposal, as a high-stakes battle over who absorbs the cost of the global raw ore shortage.

Copper treatment fees — what smelters charge miners to refine concentrate into metal — have collapsed to zero as raw ore shortages flip bargaining power to miners. Antofagasta wants refining fees tied to daily spot prices, not fixed annual contracts; smelters refuse while spot fees hit negative $126 per ton. Pension and infrastructure funds increasingly buy long-life development-stage mineral projects as infrastructure plays, driving demand for Atlas Salt's $15 million bought-deal financing. Junior developers are bypassing costly bank debt, selling a fixed share of future production through streaming and royalty deals for upfront cash without equity dilution. Ontario reopened its Critical Minerals Innovation Fund, offering junior miners grants up to $500,000 with a 50% private match for battery, exploration, and processing projects.

Shifting Metal Price Forecasts, Catalysts Driving Volta Metals and A2Gold | Chairman’s Briefing

• Top takeaway She argues the gold downgrade is a near-term cooling rather than the end of the bull market, pointing to Citi's intact 12-month target of $4,500 and a solid structural floor.
• She backs the copper bull case, highlighting Jefferies' raised long-term forecast of $6.50 per pound and a projected deficit of nearly 500,000 tons a year to 2030.
• She presents this episode's partners, Volta Metals and A2Gold, as catalyst-rich juniors: Volta ahead of a late-2026 economic study at Springer, A2Gold after unifying its Taylor district and posting high-grade samples at Eastside.
• She frames McEwen's Gray Fox study as mattering most for its capital structure, with the $181 million build expected to be funded from cash flow and treasury rather than dilution.

Citi cut its three-month gold forecast to $4,000 but held its 12-month target at $4,500, signaling a flatter summer, not a broken bull market. Jefferies raised its long-term copper forecast to $6.50 a pound by 2027, projecting a 500,000-ton annual global deficit to 2030. Volta Metals' Springer drill hole, 688 meters of continuous rare earth and gallium mineralization, plus 88% first-pass flotation recovery point to lower processing costs. A2Gold unified its Nevada Taylor district by acquiring in-fill claims and hit 10.5 g/t gold in surface sampling at Eastside's Black Rock target. McEwen Mining's Gray Fox pre-feasibility study adds 87,000 ounces of annual gold production from 2028, extending the Fox complex to 2041 with little share dilution.

Equinox-Orla Merger, and Trump Revives One of the Oldest Rumours in Finance | Chairman’s Briefing

• Top takeaway She frames the week around a 1.4% jump in the producer price index, arguing higher wholesale costs are a pipeline effect that eventually reach consumers.
• Gold retreated to about $4,680 as the US dollar and Treasury yields spiked, and she reads the move as the market betting a more aggressive Federal Reserve holds rates higher to cool factory-gate inflation.
• Her underlying point is that production costs are rising and the era of cheap goods faces its steepest challenge yet.
• On gold she highlights the political intrigue of renewed questions about the bullion at Fort Knox and the possibility of a new audit, weighed against a record precious-metals rally.
• On copper she stresses supply concentration: the ten largest mines produce over 20% of world supply, leaving portfolios more exposed to a single disruption than to global interest rates.

Equinox Gold and Orla Mining struck an $18.5 billion all stock merger of equals, creating a 1.1 million ounce a year producer. A 1.4% jump in wholesale costs pulled gold back to $4,680 as the dollar and Treasury yields climbed on the data. President Trump's Fort Knox speculation adds political intrigue to a record precious metals rally, with no vault visit since 1974. Ten aging mines supply over 20% of world copper, so one landslide or strike now moves prices faster than interest rates. Sancomap Metals will drill up to 3,000 metres at its Kuma property in the Solomon Islands through early in the third quarter.

A Global Production Cliff is Gold's Real Power Play | Chairman’s Briefing

• Top takeaway She opens by framing the week around the money and trends moving through the mining sector and the high-stakes metals markets.
• Her central argument is that gold's real support is not coming from the bankers but from a supply-side crisis, and that the physical scarcity of the metal is building a permanent floor under it.
• She argues silver is finding a new primary driver in the European energy transition, noting EVs took a record 19.4% of EU first-quarter registrations and that a single fast DC charging station can require up to 50 ounces of silver, leaving silver trading more like an industrial battery metal and less tied to precious-metals volatility.
• On the Canada Strong Fund she closes the segment on whether the state has the discipline to pick winners without political interference.

Gold's real support is physical, not monetary: Newmont's 13% quarterly output drop turns a company problem into a systemic supply constraint. Silver is trading as an industrial battery metal, with EV adoption and fast-charging buildout the demand drivers to watch. Copper's rally now rests on fragile supply, not demand: sulfuric acid, a reagent for heap leaching, faces a Strait of Hormuz bottleneck. Ottawa's $25 billion Canada Strong Fund faces criticism over taxpayer risk, First Nations partnership gaps, and debt-funded balance sheet strain. Amex began a 15,000-metre drill program at Perron West; Arizona Metals' PEA (a preliminary economic assessment) values Kay Mine at $445 million NPV.