Metallic Melt-Up: the Year of Living Preciously

Greetings, Morning Reckoneers! I hope you had a good Christmas last week. And of course, this week brings 2025 to a close and kicks off the next year of the calendar. Make Calendars Great Again, right?

As the week unfolds, you’ll notice that your inbox is light on content from Paradigm Press. Some articles are reruns and “best of” items because just about everybody is taking a few days to go easy, recharge, read a book or two, straighten up the garage, travel, spend time with family, etc.

Our publisher, Matt Insley, along with Reckoning managing editor Adam Sharp, asked if I wanted to reboot a previous article for today, versus generate original content. My reply was, “I dunno, let’s wait and see.”

So, we waited and we saw. And if you’ve followed the numbers, we’re in the midst of a year-end rise in precious metal prices, a metal melt-up, some might say. And since time and tide wait for no one, I decided to take a stab and unpack what’s happening. Let’s dig in…

Melted metal poured in Pennsylvania. Courtesy NCN News.

The Year of Living Preciously

First, I hope that 2025 was good to you. Definitely, 2025 was good if you owned precious metals or were invested in a long list of companies with blowout share performance. The moves in metals alone were eye-popping. For example, with physical metals:

At the beginning of 2025, gold was $2,640/oz.; at one point in the past few days, it was $4,550: up over 72%. Yes, it’s down from that level just now, but “something” is going on which I’ll address below.

Stream-rounded gold nugget, about 5 oz. BWK photo; courtesy Alaska Mint, Anchorage.

At the beginning of 2025, silver was $29/oz.; now, it’s over $77 (and has traded over $90 in Asian markets): up about 165%.

At the beginning of 2025, platinum was $900/oz.; this past Friday, it was over $2,450: up about 172%. And yes, down today, but… there’s more to the tale.

At the beginning of 2025 our favorite red metal, namely industrial-electrical copper, was $3.00/lb.; now, it’s over $5.55 (and has traded up to $5.80): up about 85%.

And! That’s! Not! All! Because…

If you follow metal prices, you just witnessed a staged, scripted, World Wrestling-quality pricing smackdown in Sunday night-Monday morning trading. Those high prices of last week took serious haircuts. So, this is your signal to beware short-term trading in/out. You can lose your shirt if you do things wrong.

In other words, and to mix my metaphors of struggle, clearly, with metal prices just now we have a herd of Big Elephants fighting in dark rooms. I’m inclined to view the situation as physical demand driving prices up, while desperate paper-traders try to push prices down. More on that below…

Meanwhile, the 2025 price moves in mining shares were equally dramatic and covered the waterfront, from small cap Canadian juniors to large international mining behemoths, as well as the royalty side of the house. Again, for example:

Over the past year, royalty play Franco Nevada (FNV) moved from $120 to $220, up 83%.

Another royalty play, Royal Gold (RGLD), moved from $132 to $233, up 76%.

Gold mining giant Barrick Mining (B) – which also digs copper – moved from $16 to $46, up about 187%.

Newmont Mining (NEM) moved from $37 to $106, up 186%.

Pan American Silver (PAAS) moved from $29 to $55, up 175%.

First Majestic Silver (AG) moved from about $5 to over $17, up 240%.

Platinum miner Sibanye Stillwater (SBSW) moved from $3.50 to over $15, up about 328%.

All this, while more than a few sizeable, advanced stage developers also did well in 2025. For example:

Seabridge Gold (SA), which moved from just under $12 to over $31, up 158%.

Dakota Gold (DC), which moved from $2.40 to $6.45, up 168%.

McEwen Inc. (MUX), which moved from $8.00 to $20, up 150%. And note, McEwen mines gold in Canada and holds a dominant position in a major copper-gold development play in Argentina.

In the so-called “junior” space, many companies broke out this year and showed their stuff. For example:

In Alaska, producer-developer-explorer Contango Ore (CTGO) moved from the $10 range to its current level of $27 or so, up about 170%. And this dovetails with a planned merger between Contango and silver explorer Dolly Varden (DVS), which itself moved from $2.60 to $4.60, up 76%.

Yukon vista in the “Gold Belt.” BWK photo.

Just across the border from Alaska, in the geologically endowed Tintina Gold Belt of the storied Yukon, Snowline Gold (SNWGF), moved from $3.60 to about $12.75, up over 250% which generated a market cap of $2.3 billion. All this for what is, at root, an advanced-stage explorer.

And Yikes! That is, with Snowline there’s definitely a massive ore body up there (I’ve visited the site three times), and the people and management are just plain superb. But still, the logistics of development and future production are daunting, and any sane timeline is many years ahead of us. But buyers are buying.

For those with lower risk tolerance, and who seek only nine million or so ounces of near-surface, mineable Yukon gold located along a year-round highway, next to a power line, and with its own nearby airfield (yep, been there too, many times), there’s always Banyan Gold (BYAGF). The company’s market cap is “only” $275 million, based on this year’s share movement from $0.13 to the current $0.70 range, up about 435%.

Or if you just want a hip-pocket, surface-exposed, porphyry copper-gold development play, also in the Yukon, there’s always Western Copper & Gold (WRN), market cap about $550 million. Its share price moved in 2025 from $1.00 to $2.75, up about 175%. And it helps that your co-owner of about one-fifth of the company is Rio Tinto (RIO), which I suspect likes what it sees there.

Your editor at Western Copper’s “Casino” project. BWK photo.

The Story Behind the Story

Okay, I could go on all day listing large and small companies, all with great assets, management teams, and impressive share price moves in 2025. And as always, please be advised that we don’t track a portfolio in the Reckoning letter. If you buy shares in anything I mention here, watch the charts, wait for down days, always use limit orders, and never chase momentum.

Yeah-yeah-yeah, but the real issue is… “What are you going to do for me like NOW? Like, in 2026? Hmmm?”

C’mon… You know that’s what you’re thinking.

Well, with the companies I listed above, recall the old saying that “past performance is not indicative of future outcomes.” Still…

Every one of the names above has something great going for it. At root, they all hold resources, aka “pounds-in-the-ground,” so to speak. And right away, that’s money in the bank after a fashion because real metals – even locked in the rocks – are fast transforming into a new form of global currency. Here’s a quick summary.

First, we are now – in 2026 – entering that long-forecasted era of true, absolute, no-sh!t, hair-on-fire, physical shortages of critical metals: copper, silver, platinum, gold and many more.

All of that non-investment and chronic under-investment of the 2000s, 2010s and early 2020s is unfolding. Chickens coming home to roost, if you will… Or swallows returning to Capistrano… whatever. Cause-Effect. The. Metal. Is. Not. There. Sorry, Charlie.

All the money that investors and management teams didn’t put into exploration or development plays over the past two decades? All those exploration, development, production permits that governments never granted, or delayed-delayed-delayed? The roads that never got built? Power grids that never got upgraded? Young people who didn’t major in geology, mining engineering, industrial engineering, etc.?

Hey, welcome to 2026. We. Are. Here. There’s NOT enough metal to go around. That is… Stand by for shortages:

Copper? Sorry, demand exceeds mine supply. New mines take 10 or 15 years to get up and running.

Silver? Ha!! Industrial demand far exceeds mine and refinery output, with more solar panels and electronics deepening the shortage every day. And it’s desperate out there. Large industrial users are going straight to mining companies to make offtake deals. We might even see big users like Tesla or Samsung buy up mining companies.

Platinum? Internal combustion engines need catalytic converters, plus the metal has other uses in electronics and chemical refining. While South Africa is the world’s largest producer and is scaling back output. Good luck getting metal if you’re not already on allocation.

Gold? Global central banks and Big Money Offices are buying-buying-buying. Retail coin buyers are barely in the statistical noise. But be glad-happy-ecstatic that you bought metal over the past 20 years. Oh, and per dear friend Jim Rickards, “If you haven’t bought any gold, you missed out on the first $3,000 rise in the past decade, but there’s still plenty of upside ahead so get in while you can.”

All this, and the U.S. and China are economically decoupling; likely preparing for a Great Pacific War in the next few years and we’ll be lucky if it’s five years before shots are fired. From General Motors to Boeing, the U.S. is “de-China-ing” its industrial system. So, no more China, okay?

And on the China side, that country is two years into almost complete, if not total embargoes on shipping critical metals to the West, certainly to U.S. companies. Indeed, as of January 1, 2026, China will halt-stop-cease-end all exports of refined raw silver, which likely has much to do with recent, frenzied buying and bidding on global markets.

As of now, just hold the thought in mind that ALL serious, sovereign nations in the world are in a resource-race to grab critical minerals and energy. Price suppression of the past is about to vanish into the mists of history. Sure, we’ll have up-days and down-days… But metals are precious, so live preciously.

Wrap-Up

The fact is that the mines and metals segment of the investment universe is amazingly, astonishingly small. Perhaps 3% of investors in general own any precious metals (eg., a few gold coins or a small stash of silver), and less than 1% own any sizeable level of gold or silver, meaning 10% or more of their net worth.

And if just a small fraction – tiny! – of all that so-called “tech” market cap migrates into metals, the returns will resemble a SpaceX rocket launch. And everybody loves to watch a rocket launch, right?

One last item… if you are free on Monday afternoon (Eastern Time), January 19, 2026, you are invited to listen in to a discussion about metals, mining, energy and other investment angles in Argentina and South America.

The host for this event is our old friend, Joel Bowman, who writes from Buenos Aires, and his panel will include the esteemed scholar of hard assets Rick Rule; as well as a wonderful, brilliant old friend and long-time writer from the Agora Financial days, Eric Fry; and yours truly, your humble editor.

Again, here’s the sign-up link for the January 19^th “End of the World Summit,” and be sure to mark your calendar.

Thank you for reading, and best wishes for 2026.