Despite the gauntlet of grounded flights, misplaced luggage, and a medical emergency (not mine), getting to — and departing from — the Rule Natural Resource Symposium turned into quite the odyssey. 

The logistical headaches were a small price to pay to join roughly 1,000 retail speculators in Boca Raton, Florida, while another 2,200 attended virtually. The week-long deep dive into the mining sector featured insights from the “legends of the industry” and presentations by several of the more than 60 companies that attended. 

In the Weekly Market Digest, the re-escalation of US-Iran hostilities and the subsequent shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz drove oil prices higher and raised concerns that the US Federal Reserve will lift benchmark interest rates. 

Higher real rates weighed on precious metals and the equities leveraged to them. Industrial metals and critical minerals outperformed precious metals, but equities were dragged lower by weaker sentiment.

The Exploration Insights portfolio declined last week, broadly in line with weakness in precious- and industrial-metal equity ETF benchmarks and the Canadian resource index.

In The Rant, with the help of Paul Harris of Kitco Mining, I cover the major themes extracted from the premier retail conference on natural resource investing. 

In Stock Talk, I review drill results from a PGM-nickel play in Brazil and a gold-antimony play in Australia, while a Top Pick provides an update on its cash-flowing royalty in Mexico. In addition, a prospect generator in northern Québec provides an update on its 2026 exploration programs, and a junior explorer executes a drill program with alacrity in northern Sweden.