John Feneck: Why These Critical Metals Will Explode Higher, 'Uncharted Territory' For Gold

Palisades Gold Radio Oct 2, 2026 36:33

Summary

The guest keeps gold's bull case intact through a painful consolidation, with $3,900–$4,000 support and $3,600 the next test if it breaks.

He argues the Federal Reserve has no more bullets for aggressive hikes, calling current bond yields the highest since 2002.

His portfolio uses GDX and GDXJ (gold miner sector ETFs) as a hub, then adds juniors and developers seen as eventual takeover targets.

Critical minerals now make up roughly a quarter of his book, anchored by tungsten names as China supplies 81% of world output.

He favours Nevada and Colombian explorers over riskier jurisdictions like the Congo, where nationalization concerns warrant a bigger discount.

The guest says Agnico is quietly consolidating juniors, holding at least 100 positions of 5% to 9.9% that he is aware of, based on research he did with a former Agnico employee.
He expects Agnico to keep consolidating districts around its producing mines, and points to gold juniors sitting next to Agnico's biggest Canadian operation as the most obvious targets.
Agnico already holds a 27% position in Cartier Resources, which he reads as a strong signal that the company sees value there.
He groups Agnico with the other majors that take 5%, 10% and 20% positions in juniors they like and eventually pull the trigger, so investors want to be positioned before that happens.

B2Gold's mine in Mali traded at a big discount to the majors and then rocketed higher once political risk in the country was resolved, according to the guest.
He uses it to show when he is willing to take jurisdictional risk: only where he feels he has a leg up and knows the country well, rather than anywhere the resource happens to be.

Named alongside the other big producers that quietly build 5% to 20% positions in the juniors they like, with the takeout expected to follow eventually.

Also named as a major that accumulates 5%, 10% and 20% stakes in junior explorers and then ends up taking them over.

The guest says the company has just come through a merger with Gold Resource and is picking up large pieces of Mexican ground, positioning itself to be a real player in the region.
He and Don Durrett interviewed the company, Durrett said he was buying immediately, and the stock rallied sharply before giving much of the move back.
He notes he does not own it himself and jokes about Durrett spending his own money on the name, while still calling it one he likes.

With a quarter of the shares held by Agnico, the guest reads the deliberately conservative PEA released a few weeks ago as the company not wanting to overstate anything in front of its largest holder.
The PEA did not impress the market as much as the company hoped, and he expects the coming PFS to be the next milestone that pulls majors in.
The resource is 3.2 million ounces heading to 3.5 to 4 million, and he says anything over 3 million ounces is on a major's radar.
At 18 cents he thinks the stock is gone within a year, and that a takeout at 35 cents would roughly double his money; he met management at Beaver Creek and notes senior leadership has a strong relationship with Agnico.

The vehicle owns 70% of the KAZ tungsten resource, which the guest calls one of the biggest tungsten deposits globally, with a 50-year mine life and the potential to supply 12% to 15% of world tungsten.
First production is not until Q1 of 2030, so he is explicit that you have to be willing to hold the position for years rather than trade it.
It is a Kazakh company and he tells listeners to look closely at the Washington DC address on the home page, reading the pivot into the US as deliberate.
He backs that with the supply picture: China produces about 81% of tungsten, Russia and North Korea another 5% to 6%, and Kazakhstan has come on board with the US as of last year.

Cited as a Beaver Creek takeout at a low premium, and used as an example of the deals he dislikes: 20% to 30% does not compensate investors for the risk the developer carried.

Top takeaway His valuation work targets $7,000 gold and $200 silver, and he published a list of roughly 20 stocks built on those inputs.
The method runs those metal targets through a program that spits out an implied price for each stock, which the guest calls a genuinely useful tool.
The guest takes the opposite view on time horizon, saying the Fed this month, a moderating labour market and the November 3 elections are what he trades and that this is noise to Durrett.
On their joint interview Durrett said he was buying Goldgroup immediately, which the guest jokes about as his partner spending his own money on the name.

Top takeaway The guest argues the Jackson Hole speech on August 28 was one of the longest he has heard, a diatribe on fighting inflation and raising rates, with the September 16 hike the follow-through and the first in three years.
He says new Fed chairs assert themselves and describes Warsh as ego-driven, saying what he wants when he wants it, while markets want consistency and conciseness.
He argues Warsh is not a stupid guy: he will talk his book, but he is smart enough to know there is a time to moderate.
He dismisses talk of five or six rate hikes as out in left field, saying the Fed has no bullets left and bond yields are the highest since 2002.

Top takeaway Working under Rule at Sprott, the guest says he was taught to go back to the 1970s and look at when the dollar rallied alongside gold; it is not normal, but it does happen.
He uses that lesson to reject the crowded call for a 30% to 50% dollar collapse, noting the dollar did not crash last year and gold still did very well.

Top takeaway He frames the session around whether gold's bull case survived a painful year, noting gold flipped negative a year to the day of recording and is down about 5%, and keeps pressing for the order of magnitude of the opportunity rather than a linear one.
He steers into the developer closeology framework, asking why a project with an obvious logical buyer might not be acquired quickly, and presses both the guest and CEOs to be forthright about their stories and to ask hard questions of management.

Top takeaway His intervention in the bond market on August 19 is, in the guest's view, the most significant signal of the year, and the closest thing to a bell-ringing all-in moment he has seen in a long time because it showed his hand.
It surprised most people and produced nine days of upside before the Fed at Jackson Hole on August 28 pulled the rug, with the market then brushing the September 16 hike under the rug.
He notes Costa and other macro strategists he competes with read the same signal, so he is not calling it on his own.
He frames the split between Treasury and the Fed as a divided United States that is leaving US investors angry and frustrated.

Top takeaway The guest says Costa and other macro strategists he competes with agreed with his read that the August 19 Treasury intervention was a significant signal.

Top takeaway The guest credits Mann with spotting the tungsten opportunity before he did, describing him as a Cambridge graduate and CFA who has been in tungsten since 2017.
Mann works at Skyline Builders Group Holding Ltd and built a vehicle owning 70% of the KAZ resource, a 50-year life with the potential to supply 12% to 15% of world tungsten and first production in Q1 of 2030, which the guest uses to argue you do not need to own 100% of a big deposit.