WHTW: June 2nd - 8th
It was a noisy week, but certain precious metal investors were happy.
Good morning. We’ll leave the Trump/Musk feud uncommented, as we think it’s a nothing burger and not relevant for natural resource investments. But there were a couple of things this week that did matter…
On Monday, the Trump administration began a process to open Alaska’s wilderness to oil drillers. To enable this, they relaxed restrictions from the Biden era. Baby steps towards Trump’s “Drill, Baby, Drill” rhetoric... Also, the USD slid to a new 3-year low.
Then, we got the new job reports on Tuesday. This month’s report was weak (139,000 new jobs), and last month’s beat was revised down from 177,000 to 147,000. ADP private payrolls came in below expectations with only 37,000 jobs added.
On Wednesday, China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) signed a three-year uranium supply contract with China Nuclear Fuel to deliver ~3.12 million pounds of U3O8 annually from January 2026 to December 2028. The contract features a pricing structure with 30% at a base-escalated price of US$94.22/lb and 70% tied to spot market prices. While the market cheered the headline, we believe that this development is not going to reflect lots of other contracting parties, and it is rather a Chinese (partial) subsidy to CGN.
Also, the GDX announced major changes coming to the ETF as it will start tracking a different index than before. This affects a lot of key holdings, and notably kicks $GMIN out of the index. We covered this in more detail on X: https://x.com/ByAntithesis/status/1931064076928762178
Silver is still climbing. After hitting $35 on Thursday, silver broke $36 on Friday (the highest level in over a decade) and closed the week at $35.98. Our favorite silver stocks had a decent week:
AbraSilver: +11%
Coeur: +17%
Pan American: +18%
Some folks on X argue it’s now time to take profits. But, in our view, the party hasn’t even begun.
Other noteworthy items include:
South America: The Colombian opposition senator and presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot in Bogotá on Saturday evening. Thankfully, he survived. Still, the country just can’t catch a break. We missed the Collective Mining run-up due to political risk, and events like this reaffirm why we remain on the sidelines in Colombia.
Canada: Following his recent positive remarks with regards to the oil & gas sector, Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced that he is prepared to sit over the summer to pass a new bill to fast-track major projects. Carney and the premiers agreed on the criteria for what constitutes a project to be in the national interest.
Thank you for reading. We write this to help you with your investments while filtering out irrelevant noise. If you found it useful, feel free to forward to a friend or share on X.
— Antithesis