A Sukari acquisition just closed, a royalty book that keeps paying while costs climb everywhere else, and a titanium supplier filling the hole Russia left in aerospace procurement. Each pick sits on an advantage competitors cannot copy quickly. Here is how you position before the market catches up.

RETIREMENT MEETS GOLD

J.P. Morgan still sees gold reaching roughly $6,000–$6,300 an ounce, keeping the long-term outlook firmly bullish.

For investors nearing retirement, that raises a simple question: how much of your savings is actually diversified beyond stocks and bonds?

A free guide explains how eligible retirement funds may be used to add physical gold when structured correctly.

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The Xi-Trump summit kicks off this week and the setup is nothing like the 2019 version. Beijing walks in with a trade engine still running hot, and Treasury Secretary Bessent has already spent hours across the table from Vice Premier He Lifeng trying to build guardrails around rare earths, gallium, and germanium before the meeting even starts. Track any communique language on those three materials before you adjust exposure.

You should read that as confirmation that the critical minerals card is now the biggest chip on the table. China still processes roughly 90% of the world's rare earth magnets, controls the bulk of graphite anode material, and dominates gallium refining used in defense radar and satellite comms. Washington knows it. Beijing knows Washington knows it.

The market reaction so far has been muted, which is exactly why the setup should interest you. The 10-year Treasury is sitting right around the 5% line, gold is holding $4,390, and equity vol collapsed to a 15 handle. A polite outcome is being priced in. History says these summits produce a headline, a pullback, and then a fresh round of escalation four to six weeks later, so mark your calendar for early November.

Your takeaway: You want exposure to companies that benefit from either outcome. A polite handshake bids up everything cyclical. A blowup rockets anything with domestic processing or non-China supply. Own the overlap.

While everyone stares at the summit, the domestic lithium buildout keeps moving, and you should track it. Thacker Pass is now producing, Rhyolite Ridge is deep in construction, and the DOE loan office has been writing checks for anode and cathode facilities across Nevada, Arizona, and the Carolinas.

Lithium carbonate prices are still bombed out compared to the 2022 mania, which is what makes this interesting. You have federal equity stakes on one side and a spot price that has finally stopped bleeding. Every major cathode maker with US assembly plants is now scrambling for offtake agreements outside China because the 2027 tax credit clawbacks under the Inflation Reduction Act's foreign-entity-of-concern rules kick in hard.

Translation: if an EV maker wants the $7,500 credit, they need non-China battery inputs, and there is nowhere near enough domestic supply to fill the gap. That imbalance shows up in offtake pricing before spot, so watch offtake prints for your early signal.

Your takeaway: The lithium equity trade already blew up in 2023 and 2024, and quite a few investors still refuse to touch it. That is the reason to look now. You want the names with actual production, actual federal backing, and balance sheets that survived the drawdown.

Gold is sitting at $4,390 after touching $5,586 earlier this cycle. On paper, that is a 21% drawdown from the peak, and sentiment has turned sour. The World Gold Council's latest data tells a different story. Central banks are still buying at roughly 60 tonnes a month, with Poland, China, and India leading. Turkey has been adding for the fourth straight quarter. Weigh that official bid against the 21% drop before you write the move off.

This is structural, not tactical. The 10-year at 5% would normally crush gold. Instead, the metal is holding above $4,390 because the marginal buyer is no longer a US retail ETF trader. It is a foreign central bank diversifying away from Treasuries. Watch the TIC data. Foreign official holdings of US debt are flatlining while central bank gold reserves are printing new record tonnages.

The equity side of gold has not caught up for you. Producer margins at $4,390 gold are wider than they have ever been in absolute dollar terms. All-in sustaining costs (AISC) at the major miners run $1,400 to $1,600 per ounce. That is a $2,700+ per ounce margin. Free cash flow yields on the majors are pushing double digits, so check whether the miners in your book reflect that spread yet.

Your takeaway: Gold miners are the cheapest they have been relative to the metal in a decade. If you have been waiting for the pullback, you got it.

ELON’S NEXT MOVE

At a $7,500 tech conference in L.A., one analyst says Elon Musk hinted at a major business move tied to a $126 trillion opportunity.

The surprising part? He believes one little-known $15 stock could sit directly in the path of that shift.

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You are looking at one of the largest gold producers on earth still trading at a discount to its North American peers because half of its production sits in Ghana, Tanzania, and Guinea. That perception is the opportunity. Management moved the primary listing to New York last year, sold non-core Argentine assets, and just closed the Centamin deal that adds Egypt's Sukari mine, one of the highest-grade open-pit operations in production.

At $4,390 gold, AU's cost profile prints something close to $2,000-plus per ounce in free cash flow. The company reinstated a proper dividend, is buying back stock for the first time in years, and still trades at roughly half the price-to-net-asset-value multiple of Agnico or Newmont. The re-rating catalyst is simply time and consistent quarterly execution. You want to be there before the discount closes.

Franco-Nevada does not operate mines. It buys royalties and streams on other people's, which means it collects a slice of revenue while the operator eats every cost increase in diesel, labor, and sustaining capital.

In a year where miners are fighting cost inflation, that is the cleanest way you can own the gold price. Q2 revenue rose 57% year over year on 132,405 gold-equivalent ounces sold, up 18%, with adjusted EBITDA of $529.7 million, up 45%.

The balance sheet is the other half of the case: no debt at all, and roughly $4.3 billion of available capital to buy new royalties while smaller producers are starved for funding. Management has raised the dividend 19 straight years, now $0.44 a quarter, and deliveries from Cobre Panama are moving back toward the royalty book after the shutdown.

You get gold price leverage, a growing income stream, and none of the cost exposure that has punished the operators.

ATI melts and forges the titanium, nickel superalloys, and specialty steel that go into every F-35 engine, every Boeing 787 fuselage, and every next-generation hypersonic frame. Russia used to supply roughly one-third of aerospace-grade titanium sponge globally.

That supply is now radioactive from a procurement standpoint, and ATI has been booking multi-year contracts to fill the void, which is the backlog you are buying into here.

Backlog is at record highs. The company just guided to double-digit revenue growth through 2028 driven by defense and commercial aerospace. Margins are expanding as the mix shifts toward higher-value melted-and-forged product versus commodity flat-rolled.

If the Xi-Trump summit produces any friction around Chinese titanium or specialty metals imports, ATI is the direct beneficiary. You get defense tailwinds, aerospace tailwinds, and a de-China trade all in one ticker.

FCC FILING MATTERS

James Altucher believes Elon Musk just filed a plan with the FCC to take over the AI industry… from outer space.  

Around the same time, Trump signed an order gutting the red tape around commercial space launches… and signed the second order pushing NASA to hand its work to private companies (aka SpaceX).  

It’s clear Washington is clearing the runway for Elon’s biggest project to date…

And James Altucher predicts it could create 1,806,000 NEW millionaires over the next decade starting September 25.  

This FREE millionaire maker masterclass describes why you should get positioned in the $100 company at the center of it all.   

• Gold: $4,390/oz, pulled back from the $5,586 52-week high but up about 1% year-to-date from the $4,350 January open. Central bank demand structural at 60 tonnes per month.

• Silver: $66/oz, down 7% from the $71 January open and roughly 45% off the $121.30 all-time high hit earlier this year. Industrial demand from solar and grid keeps the floor firm.

• Copper: $6.75/lb, up 19% YTD from the $5.65 January open and pressing against 52-week highs near $6.81. Supply deficit tightening with Chilean grades still declining.

• Uranium: Spot near $90/lb with the long-term contract price at a record $96 to $97. HALEU tightness is the more interesting story for equity holders.

• Platinum: Back above $1,600/oz on tighter South African supply. Hydrogen electrolyzer demand starting to matter.

• Lithium: Carbonate spot has stopped bleeding. Contract pricing for non-China supply printing meaningful premiums to spot.

• Rare Earths (NdPr oxide): China export controls keeping ex-China prices at roughly 2x domestic Chinese prices. Structural bifurcation is here.

• Nickel: Class 1 nickel weak on Indonesian oversupply, but battery-grade sulfate holding a premium. Watch for tariff action.

Metal Trend Exploration Focus

Xi lands in Washington this week with more leverage than the equity market is currently pricing in. Gold's pullback, silver's drawdown, and copper's fresh highs are all telling you the same thing: the market is separating monetary metals from industrial metals, and the industrial side is where the tightness is real.

Whether the summit produces a handshake or a headline blowup, the winners are companies with assets outside China, offtake locked in, and margins that expand as prices firm. You want to be positioned before the next headline lands. The next 90 days will decide the leadership names for the next cycle.

— Noah Zelvis, Resource Brief