Gold keeps grinding higher, but one tier-one royalty book still trades like the metal never moved. Potash has firmed 18% off spring lows while the world's largest producer gets priced as a tired cyclical.

And silver equities overcorrected on the pullback, leaving one producer with expansion volume and falling costs on offer.

GOLD OUTLOOK RISING

Gold is trading above $4,300 an ounce, and J.P. Morgan says prices could climb toward $6,000 by year-end 2026 and potentially $6,300 by the end of 2027.

That outlook is getting the attention of retirement investors looking to diversify beyond stocks and bonds.

A free guide explains how eligible retirement savings may be used to add physical gold without triggering an immediate taxable distribution when structured correctly.

The lithium bear market is showing its first real cracks.

Chinese lithium carbonate contracts are pushing back through 90,000 yuan per tonne this week after CATL confirmed extended maintenance at its Jianxiawo lepidolite operation and Zangge Mining halted output at its Qinghai brine facility pending permit renewal. Combined, that's roughly 8% of Chinese domestic supply offline heading into Q4. If you own lithium names, 90,000 yuan is the line to mark on your chart into Q4.

You've watched lithium carbonate spend the better part of two years bleeding from $80,000/tonne down toward $10,000. Producers pushed through the pain, added capacity anyway, and killed pricing power.

That phase is ending. Albemarle, SQM, and Arcadium (now inside Rio Tinto) have all guided down 2027 volume plans. Chinese converters are running at 60-65% utilization. Western OEMs are starting to worry about qualified supply again.

Demand isn't the story here. EV growth is fine; grid storage is booming. Supply discipline is finally showing up because the marginal ton of production is losing money at spot.

Your takeaway: You want exposure before the next long-term contract cycle resets pricing higher. The equities are pricing in permanent oversupply. That's wrong, and you will see it break first in contract pricing. Watch the Q4 earnings guides from major converters. Any language about "tightening" is your green light.

Tokyo and Brussels signed a memorandum this week to co-fund a strategic rare-earth reserve targeting neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium. Initial target: 90 days of combined industrial demand, built over 36 months, sourced exclusively from non-Chinese refineries.

This is the second major reserve initiative in six months following Washington's own critical minerals stockpile program. What's different here is the refining requirement. Japan and the EU aren't buying Chinese-refined material at any price. That's the entire game. Mining rare earths isn't the bottleneck. Separating and refining them is, and China owns roughly 90% of global processing capacity.

The scramble for qualified non-Chinese processing capacity is now a three-continent bidding war. Prices for finished neodymium-praseodymium oxide (NdPr) have already jumped 22% this quarter in ex-China markets, even as the Chinese domestic price barely moved.

Your takeaway: You are seeing a bifurcated market emerge in real time. Non-Chinese refined rare-earth prices are decoupling from the Shanghai benchmark. Any Western processor with qualified capacity is sitting on a call option. Follow the refining, not the ore body.

Kolwezi in the DRC is dealing with rolling blackouts that have already cost Ivanhoe's Kamoa-Kakula complex and Glencore's Kamoto operation an estimated 40,000 tonnes of copper production this quarter. The regional grid, dependent on hydropower from Inga dams, has been running at 55% of nameplate capacity through a brutal dry season. Track the next Inga output update before you size any copper exposure.

The DRC produces roughly 12% of global copper and nearly 70% of global cobalt. When Kolwezi coughs, the London Metal Exchange (LME) copper stocks feel it within weeks. LME warehouse inventories already sit at multi-year lows, and this power situation isn't clearing before Q1 2027 at the earliest, so mark that date on any copper thesis you're running.

The strategic read is bigger than one bad quarter. Every major copper project in the DRC is now a diesel-generator story or a private-power-plant story. Cost curves are shifting higher, permanently. That's bullish for producers in jurisdictions with reliable grids and bearish for anyone modeling flat DRC supply growth into 2028, so strip flat DRC supply out of any 2028 copper model you're running.

Your takeaway: Copper's tight supply story just got tighter, and the American names with domestic power look better every week. If you're modeling copper near current levels as some sort of ceiling, revisit that assumption. The bull case for $8 by mid-2027 is getting easier to draw.

GOLD BEFORE CHANGE

In 1971, one Sunday-night announcement changed the dollar almost overnight.

Today, investors are again asking what inflation, policy shifts, and rising central-bank gold demand could mean for retirement savings.

This free guide explains why gold is back in focus, how physical gold can fit into certain retirement strategies, and what some investors are doing to prepare before the next major monetary shift.

Royal Gold (NASDAQ: RGLD)

With Franco-Nevada and Wheaton getting all the analyst airtime, Royal Gold has been the third royalty name that keeps compounding without the crowd noise. Gold at $4,440 pushes existing streams straight to the bottom line, and Royal Gold's business is nearly all in tier-one jurisdictions: US, Canada, Australia, Chile. No political tail risk.

The company just closed on additions to its portfolio at Mount Milligan and Cortez, and free cash flow conversion runs above 60% of gross revenue. What you're getting is a bet on gold price without a single dollar of capex risk, mining strike risk, or fuel cost inflation.

The stock has lagged the physical metal's move this year, which is exactly the kind of dislocation you want to be on the right side of.

Nutrien (NYSE: NTR)

The world's largest potash producer, and the market treats it like a boring cyclical. Potash prices have firmed 18% off their spring lows as Chinese import contracts settled higher and Belarus export volumes stayed constrained. Nutrien's Saskatchewan operations sit on the largest proven potash reserve base on the planet, giving it a structural cost advantage peers cannot replicate.

The nitrogen segment is riding cheap North American natural gas, and management just raised the buyback authorization to $2 billion. Food-security policy is becoming a bipartisan story in Washington and Ottawa, and fertilizer inputs sit right in the middle of it.

You get a roughly 2.8% dividend yield ($2.20 annualized) while you wait for the market to reprice the potash cycle, which typically happens on a single settlement announcement.

Coeur Mining (NYSE: CDE)

Silver at $68 gives every mid-cap silver producer serious operating leverage, but Coeur is one of the few with genuine production growth to layer on top of price. The Rochester expansion in Nevada is now running at full ramp, and the SilverCrest acquisition added the Las Chispas mine in Mexico, one of the highest-grade silver operations in the world.

That combination puts Coeur on track for over 20 million silver-equivalent ounces annually with all-in sustaining costs (AISC) trending down.

Debt paydown has accelerated, and management is finally guiding to positive free cash flow at current metal prices. Silver has pulled back hard from its $121 peak in January, but the equities have overcorrected. That's your entry.

ELON’S AI PLAN

James Altucher just uncovered an FCC filing Elon’s been keeping quiet about…  

And believes it’s part of the biggest wealth creation event in history.  

This project would allow Elon to control the AI Industry from end to end… and could create 1,806,000 new millionaires over the coming decade starting September 25.  

Want your shot to become one of them? 

• Gold: $4,420/oz. Pulled back from the $5,586 peak but still up roughly 2% year-to-date from the $4,351 January opening. Central bank buying continues to underpin the floor around $4,200.

• Silver: $67/oz. Down roughly 5% from the $71 January opening and well off the $121 all-time high set earlier this year. The gold/silver ratio at 65:1 leaves room for silver to outperform if the industrial demand story holds.

• Copper: $6.70/lb. Just below the $6.81 52-week high, up 18% year-to-date from the $5.65 January opening. LME inventories at multi-year lows, DRC power issues piling on top.

• Uranium: Spot near $90/lb with term contracts near $96. Kazatomprom guidance cuts and US enrichment buildout keeping the bid firm heading into utility contracting season.

• Lithium: Chinese carbonate contracts through 90,000 yuan/tonne this week on producer cuts. First real supply discipline in two years. Base is forming.

• Rare Earths (NdPr): Ex-China refined prices up 22% this quarter as Japan/EU stockpile plans redirect supply. Domestic Chinese pricing barely moved. The bifurcation is real.

• Platinum: Consolidating in the mid-$1,600s as hydrogen fuel-cell investment picks up in Asia. Supply from South Africa is still constrained.

• Nickel: Class 1 nickel remains soft on Indonesian oversupply, but the LME is starting to differentiate on carbon content. Western producers are gaining a premium.

Metal Trend Exploration Focus

Today's theme is dispersion. Copper and gold hog the headlines, but the real setups this week sit in the corners: lithium finding a supply-discipline bottom, rare-earth pricing bifurcating between Chinese and Western markets, and potash firming into contract season.

The next leg of the resource cycle won't be uniform. It'll reward stock pickers who find the mispriced pockets while the ETF crowd chases the obvious names. If you want in, hunt in lithium, rare earths, and potash this week, not copper and gold.

— Noah Zelvis, Resource Brief