Since 2018, I have worked with colleagues steeped in the financial side of the mineral sector, but with technical backgrounds similar to mine, to deliver 13 editions of a Capital Markets short course to nearly 800 technical professionals, from Santiago, Chile, to Levi, Finland.

This weekend, we are in Salt Lake City, Utah, at the Society of Economic Geologists (SEG) Annual Conference, presenting the course to 25 keen geologists. The timing is particularly apt. Last week’s carnage across commodity markets and the equities leveraged to them reminds our audience that finding the rocks may be the straightforward part.

In the Weekly Market Digest, a 52-week high in real rates supported a new high in the US dollar and generated a mild spike in market volatility. The combination weighed on precious metals and pressured equities. Industrial metals also fell as higher costs of capital may have weighed on growth expectations, but the impact on equities was only modest. 

The Exploration Insights Portfolio was down last week but still outperformed the precious metal equity ETF benchmarks, though not the base metal ones, as most of the portfolio fell, led by a Top Pick, while only a few generated positive returns, led by a pair of grassroots copper explorers. 

In Stock Talk, I review exploration updates from several grassroots copper explorers in the Yukon, Kazakhstan, eastern and central Perú. A prospect generator in Australia picks up a land package in South Australia covering several IOCG targets. A gold-antimony explorer/developer advances permitting while a gold developer in southern Idaho completes a sale of a non-core asset in Türkiye. I am selling a cash-flowing royalty company that has undergone yet another transformational change while recognizing returns from a precious metal developer in northwest Argentina.