My introduction to the Kamchatka Peninsula came decades ago while playing Risk™. Last week, this remote corner of the northwest Pacific, perched on the Ring of Fire, reminded me it’s more than just a territory on a strategic board game. 

A powerful magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck offshore, triggering the eruption of Klyuchevskoy, Eurasia’s tallest active volcano, and a tsunami warning stretching from Hawaii to the west coast of North America. The resulting wave reached Vancouver Island in under 10 hours but fortunately measured less than one meter high.

Ironically, the US market volatility last week produced a bigger wave.

In the Weekly Market Digest, a weak US jobs report, combined with a higher inflation rate than the Federal Reserve is targeting and poorly executed tariff policies, did not support equities or many commodities.

The Exploration Insights portfolio was down in line with the precious and base metal equity ETF benchmarks, as most holdings generated a negative return, including a US copper cathode developer negatively impacted by the change in copper tariffs. The outperformer was a grassroots precious metal explorer in the western US. Despite the US push to build a domestic REE mine-to-magnet industry, a REE developer was the worst performer. In other news, a copper-gold explorer in the Philippines will begin drilling next week.

In The Rant, I review the growing impact of Silicon Valley-funded tech-heavy enterprises that are entering the mining sector to contract the timelines from discovery to production of critical minerals.

In Stock Talk, I discuss the highlights of an updated MRE for a gold-silver deposit in
NW Argentina, but will defer a detailed review until I speak to management. I also took a look at an exploration update from a copper-gold explorer in the Peruvian jungle.