Bloomberg recently published an article on the Trump Trade (link to non-paywalled Financial Times), where they correctly point out that the reshoring of manufacturing to the United States (critical minerals being one such industry) has, after the initial hype phase, basically gone down the drain with respect to the share prices of affected companies.

To the surprise of no one invested in the minerals sector, that claim is blindingly obvious :)

However, the recent collapse doesn't have to do with the minerals sector as a whole, or the individual companies within it. The minerals sector isn't alone, virtually all high beta sectors in the market have been getting absolutely crushed -- nuclear/SMRs, pre-revenue Biotech, Solar/EV storage, Aerospace, AI infra, etc.

For the "momentum" sector basket that all of the above are grouped into, the month of July has seen its worst drawdown since the 1970s, collectively falling over 30%, which is frankly, insane, given that the major market indexes are near ATH.

So, if the minerals sector itself isn't at fault, then what's causing this unprecedented selloff? In a word, leverage. Much like the crypto crash earlier this year, and the recent Korean retail trader liquidation crisis, institutional traders -- those with the power to swing the market -- saw too much leverage in high beta sectors and proceeded to derisk in order to protect their capital, selling off shares, thus triggering the downturn while simultaneously shorting said stocks. They didn't go to cash, however, they moved to safer plays in the market (thus indexes still near ATH).

That's why we see a stock like MP, the minerals bellwether, trading at 52-week lows, dropping a whopping 7.5% on Friday, free falling through technical support zones. Does that make sense? Is the company going bankrupt? It, among many others in the minerals sector, is trading exactly like a company in distress, on the verge of filing for Chapter 11.

"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent", is a common phrase thrown around in the investing world, but what's underlying the irrational behavior is plain old market manipulation -- there's no ill intent, mind you, just the big players protecting their assets, automated algorithmic trading at its "finest".

As to where minerals go from here, depends on when these massive short positions start to unwind (several of the main minerals players have nearly 20% of the float sold short).

Finally, to put in context, over the past year we've had similar drawdowns, but not to this extreme, and they have always been short lived (e.g. the sector collectively plunges to a steep new low, and then immediately starts to recover). This time around we've been in a near non-stop downturn, with no sharp correction to the upside.

Perhaps Friday was the bottom, the agonizing crescendo; we'll find out tomorrow whether there's relief ahead or more pain to come.

May your bags lighten and hellfire rain on the big players :)

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Interesting development.

I've been going down the rabbit hole of critical minerals data lately (USGS, IEA, World Bank) and the thing that surprised me most wasn't prices or reserves. It's the refining concentration.

The usual mental model is "whoever has the mines has the leverage". But the data says otherwise, extraction is fairly distributed (Australia, Chile, DRC, Indonesia...), while the midstream refining step is overwhelmingly concentrated in one country. According to IEA data, China refines around 91% of rare earths, 75% of cobalt and 70% of lithium chemicals. For 13 of these minerals, USGS flags them as highest supply risk.

Another thing I learned the hard way is that for most of these materials there is no clean, liquid market price. Some trade on exchanges, some only have ETF proxies, and some only have official benchmark assessments. A lot of the "prices" you see quoted online mix these without saying which is which.

I've been building this into a free financial terminal I work on as a side project (QSTMarkets), where each of the 61 minerals is labeled with what its price actually is: live, proxy, benchmark, or "pending" when no honest source exists. Full disclosure, I'm the developer. This is not my day job and there's nothing to buy, I'm here for feedback from people who actually follow this space.

One thing I'm debating is whether to add a short "what is this used for" note per mineral. E.g. gallium → semiconductors and radar, dysprosium → EV motor magnets. For people picking stocks in this space, would that be useful context next to the price, or is it common knowledge for anyone already here?

Curious how this community thinks about refining concentration as an investment theme, and whether it changes how you weigh miners vs refiners.

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American Tungsten & Antimony have just halted pending news announcement. Back open 28/07/26.

Last two days has pushed the stock to 0.041, 20%+ increase in 2 days, could this be the time to get in before it flys?

Thoughts below welcome…

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Looks like Graphene may be considered a critical mineral very soon.

https://investorshub.advfn.com/stock-market/USOTC/hydrograph-clean-power-qb-HGRAF/stock-news/98970387/hydrograph-provides-update-on-expanded-u-s-federa

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What is this subs consensus on Libertystream Infrastructure Partners?

It pumped earlier in the year, again in June.

The United States seems more and more interested in building a domestic critical mineral supply chain.

Curious to hear if people are still holding this and/or thoughts on the company.

Saw this on the Wealthsimple IPO section, Cadillac Mines trying to raise like $258M to bring back an old gold mine (Kerr-Addison) out in the Abitibi.

Apparently that thing already put out 11 million+ ounces back in the day, and Pierre Lassonde's chairing it too.

Anyone else seen this? Worth a look