One Canadian gold producer carried more than $800 million of debt just over a year ago and is now buying back its own stock, thanks to a big new mine that is finally ramping.

Add a South African producer that just posted record free cash flow and a record dividend, plus a Latin American steelmaker whose quarterly EBITDA jumped 50% on stronger Mexican demand. Each gives you a different way to own the metals cycle, and each has a catalyst you can track.

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Copper is sitting at $6.80/lb, a few percent below its 52-week high, and you're looking at a roughly 20% year-to-date move off the $5.65 January open. Don't write this off as speculative froth. Copper stocks in Shanghai Futures Exchange warehouses are down roughly 70% since early June to about 43,900 tons, the lowest since 2023, and imported cargoes are going straight to fabricators instead of into storage.

On the London Metal Exchange (LME), about 45% of the metal in warehouses is already booked for withdrawal, and cash copper has flipped into backwardation, the market's way of telling you nearby metal is scarce.

Supply isn't riding to the rescue. At BHP's Escondida in Chile, the world's largest copper mine, the supervisors' union rejected the company's final wage offer and will hold a strike vote September 28 to 30, with the current contract expiring September 30.

Operations there are also only resuming gradually after a fatal accident. Panama's Cobre Panama is processing stockpiled ore, not mining, and a decision on a full restart isn't expected before year-end. Watch whether the 52-week high breaks on the next inventory print.

The one thing working against copper right now is rates. Rising rate-hike expectations pulled prices back from their run this week, so a hawkish Fed is the risk you're taking on.

Your takeaway: You want direct copper exposure right now, and you want operators with tier-one assets in stable jurisdictions. Physical tightness, not Fed policy, is driving this leg, so don't wait for a rate cut to get positioned.

The push to rebuild a domestic uranium enrichment industry keeps picking up speed. Centrus Energy finalized a $900 million Department of Energy task order this summer to expand high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) production, with options that could lift it to $1.07 billion, and on September 17 it signed a multi-year HALEU supply contract with reactor developer Antares Nuclear.

The deadline driving all of this is the US ban on Russian enriched uranium, whose waivers run out at the end of 2027. If you own utilities that lean on imported enrichment, that is a real fuel-cost question.

The DOE is also widening the field. On September 14, the National Reactor Innovation Center and the DOE selected Utah-based Nusano to develop a HALEU fuel production line under the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad program.

More government-backed enrichment capacity means more demand for uranium feed, so track which companies land the next federal commitment.

Add in the advanced reactor designs that need HALEU to run, plus the AI hyperscaler demand for baseload power, and you have every arrow pointing the same direction. Uranium itself is holding near $90/lb spot, with long-term contract prices at a record $96.50.

Your takeaway: The uranium fuel cycle is where the real scarcity lives, not just the yellowcake. Enrichment and conversion capacity is bottlenecked and government-backed, so watch who wins the federal contracts.

Chile's copper royalty debate is back on the front burner. A bill that sets a 3% floor on copper sales has cleared the lower house's mining committee and moved to its finance committee.

How much it would bite is hotly disputed: the bill's backers say it would lift the total tax burden on a producer like BHP to 56% at current prices, the center-right government puts it at 82%, and an EY study says it could top 70%.

This matters because Chile alone produces roughly a quarter of the world's copper, and Chile and Peru together produce about a third. Any policy that raises the cost of extraction or delays new project sanctioning gets priced into the forward curve fast, and a fight over fiscal terms is exactly what slows sanctioning.

Meanwhile, the near-term supply picture keeps wobbling. The Escondida strike vote next week is your short-term tell, and the royalty bill's progress through Congress is the longer-term one. If you're long copper exposure, keep an eye on both.

Your takeaway: Latin American resource risk is real, and the miners with diversified geography- think North America, Africa, and Australia in addition to LatAm- are going to command a premium multiple. Focus your capital where the political risk is priced correctly.

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IAMGOLD Corporation (NYSE: IAG)

IAMGOLD is what a gold miner looks like when a big new mine finally starts paying you back. Côté Gold in Ontario is ramping, and the company produced 188,100 attributable ounces in the second quarter and 371,700 in the first half, keeping it on track for 2026 guidance of 720,000 to 820,000 ounces, with Côté weighted to the second half.

Just over a year ago, IAMGOLD carried more than $800 million of debt. At the end of June, it had $501.4 million in cash, net debt of about $52 million, and roughly $1.35 billion of liquidity.

Management is putting that to work in buybacks: 27.9 million shares repurchased for $510.4 million since the program started in December 2025. If you want gold exposure where the story is volume growth and a shrinking share count, not just the metal price, track this one into the third-quarter report.

Harmony Gold Mining Company (NYSE: HMY)

Harmony is one of South Africa's largest gold producers, and one of the most operationally leveraged gold names you can own. In the year to June 2026, it produced about 1.43 million ounces at an all-in sustaining cost (AISC) of about $2,195 an ounce, and that higher cost base is exactly why its margin per ounce expands faster than the low-cost majors when gold holds up.

The result was record adjusted free cash flow of about $1 billion, up 54%, and a record final dividend that lifted the full-year payout to R12.80 per share. Harmony is building copper too: it guides 28,000 to 30,000 tonnes this year and owns half of the Wafi-Golpu copper-gold project in Papua New Guinea alongside Newmont, which is still waiting on its mining license.

Your watch item is cost. FY27 guidance calls for AISC of R1.30 million to R1.395 million per kilogram, so track whether the rand and wage costs let that margin hold.

Ternium S.A. (NYSE: TX)

Meet one of Latin America's leading flat steel producers, with operations in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. Business is turning: second-quarter adjusted EBITDA jumped 50% from the first quarter to $717 million on higher shipments and stronger realized prices in Mexico and Brazil, and management guided to a better third quarter.

The bigger lever is Pesquería in northeast Mexico, where a new 2.6-million-ton-per-year steel shop is on schedule and the slab facility is on track for an early 2027 start, giving Ternium more of its own slab for a more integrated North American market. You get paid while you wait: the fiscal 2025 dividend came to $2.20 per ADS, roughly a 4% yield at today's price.

The risks are real, including US trade policy toward Mexican steel and heavy capex through 2027, so track Mexican shipments and the Pesquería ramp before you decide.

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• Gold: $4,330/oz, roughly flat versus the January open and well off the $5,586 peak, but still up versus a year ago. Central banks bought a record 289 tonnes for a second quarter in Q2, and China added 20.2 tonnes in August, its 22nd straight month of buying.

• Silver: $65/oz, roughly 10% below the $71 January open and dramatically off the $121 peak from earlier this year. Industrial demand from solar remains the real driver.

• Copper: $6.80/lb, up about 20% year to date and a few percent below its 52-week high. Shanghai and London warehouse inventories keep drawing down.

• Uranium: Spot near $90/lb, with long-term contract prices at a record $96.50. Enrichment (SWU) prices remain near multi-year highs.

• Lithium: Carbonate prices consolidating after the brutal 2024-2025 washout. Chinese battery demand is recovering into year-end, but oversupply hasn't fully cleared.

• Nickel: Class 1 nickel weak, Indonesian supply still dominant. LME warehouse stocks elevated. Not a setup you want to be early on.

• Platinum: Around $1,750/oz after sliding to a five-week low as Treasury yields and the dollar climbed.

• Rare Earths: Neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) prices grinding higher on Chinese export controls and Western onshoring policy support.

Metal Trend Exploration Focus

Notice the pattern this week: physical tightness is doing the work in copper and uranium, while the crowded gold trade churns.

The macro backdrop of a ten-year yield right around 5% and a Fed that just hiked is finally testing which mining stories have real earnings power at spot prices and which were riding the momentum trade.

Over the next two quarters, the ones with government tailwinds, tier-one assets, and clean balance sheets will separate from the pack. Sort the names you own into those three buckets before the next Fed meeting.

— Noah Zelvis, Resource Brief