Our family, like many others booked to travel with the Canadian flag carrier last week, was swept up in the chaos of a major flight attendants’ strike. For a brief moment, it looked as though we’d be embarking on the ultimate Canadian road trip to drop the kids at university.

Thankfully, the strike was resolved in time to spare us the trauma. A special thanks goes out to the Air Canada staff at YVR; I trust the donuts found their mark. As for the next child, we’ve nudged them toward a school within a tank of gas from home. 

In the Weekly Market Digest, the US economy produced mixed data last week, but the net impact appears to be growing momentum for at least a cut in benchmark interest rates by the Federal Reserve at the September meeting. The news buoyed precious metals and, more so, precious metal equities.

The Exploration Insights portfolio underperformed both the precious and base metal equity ETF benchmarks. The laggards included several grassroots explorers for gold in Nevada and copper in Australia and Peru. 

This week’s letter will focus on The Rant, which covers a review of H1/2025 results for a peer group of 28 precious metal producers. Therefore, I will defer my review of updates from several companies until next week.