➡ The U.S. is planning to control the prices of important minerals to reduce reliance on China and protect Western producers, which could change supply chains and escalate tensions with China. Additionally, Newmont, a gold mining company, has exceeded earnings estimates by over 24%, leading investors to anticipate the company’s future plans for their increased profits. In other news, the markets are fluctuating with gold prices increasing, and there’s a new trend of companies offering dividends in gold.
➡ Vince and the team had a great discussion about the gold and silver markets on their show, sponsored by Dolly Varden Silver. Dolly Varden recently found high amounts of gold and silver in their mining area, with results showing more than double the expected amount, indicating a successful discovery. The CEO, Sean, explained that they found a bend in the system where they see a lot of high-grade, wide, silver and gold mineralization. Since Sean took over the company six years ago, they have significantly increased their silver holdings, especially with silver prices now much higher than before.

The United States is building a coordinated price floor system for critical minerals, signaling a move from market participation to strategic price management. If implemented through Pax Silica, the framework could reshape supply chains, protect Western producers, and escalate the minerals war with China. Second, Newmont just delivered another upside surprise, beating earnings estimates by more than 24% as revenue also came in well ahead of expectations. This is for the December quarter. Shares already up nearly 25% year-to-date. Investors are now turning to management’s forward outlook to see whether this run-in gold miner fundamentals has further to go, also what they’re going to do with their newfound money.

Welcome to the Morning Markets and Metals with Vince Lancey, where each morning Vince brings you the financial and precious metals news to get you ready for your day. And now, here’s Vince. Good morning, everyone. I’m Vince Lancey, and this is the gold fix market rundown for Friday. Here are the markets. Technically, the yields are unchanged. The dollar is up 6. The S&P 500 is down 3. The Nasdaq is down 55. The VIX is up 41. Gold is up 14 in the middle of its range at 5,015. Silver is $80.21, up $1.67. WTI is down 53 cents.

Natural gas is unchanged. Platinum is up 29. Plating is up 25. Metals are really cooking right now. Gold silver is down 1. Soybeans are down 2 cents. Corn is up 1, and wheat is up 2.5. Bitcoin is straddling 67,400. There’s the home page. Two stories we’re going to talk about. Front and center. Metal or right-hand side. Newmont earnings. Revenues beat. Let’s get to it. The US has developed a multi-agency critical minerals price-flow framework aimed at reducing dependence on Chinese supply chains tied to national security. Under Secretary Jacob Hedberg described the system as sophisticated and central to unlocking private investment with discussions underway among allied governments.

Now, you know we talk about this a lot recently, and we also have a lot more to say about it. We sent something out to founders last night. It will be sending something to premium later on today or over the weekend, but price floors are largely dismissed as a protectionist thing, but they’re actually an ability for a nation to weaponize its pricing power, which is what we’re going to do. The policy may be rolled out through Pax Silica, a US-led alliance coordinating non-Chinese sourcing and refining. Think of it like G7 OPEC.

Think of it like you want your silver, you got to get it from us. Very OPEC oriented. They’re going to do that with oil as well. Well, operational details remain limited. The initiative signals a structural shift towards strategic commodity price management. We’re going over the top. Second story, Newmont yesterday, they reported a fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings beat driven by higher realized gold prices and margin expansion across its tier one asset base. Calendar year 26 guidance introduces lower attributable production of around 5.26 million ounces and higher projected AISC reflecting asset sequencing operational variability in Australia and increased fiscal burden tied to elevated gold prices despite ongoing cost savings initiatives and balance sheet improvement.

Okay. In English, their earnings beat by 24%. Their revenues beat, they’re all in sustaining costs came in lower than what people thought it would be. That’s because they’re making, taking efforts to lower their costs by reducing costs. And their production is actually down a little bit. So that’s not a negative necessarily. It just means that it’s bullish for price. There’s not as much gold, but it could, it could be that they’re overestimating how much they have. That could be a problem down the road five years. But right now you’re looking at the earnings.

The second level is if you’re, if you’re a mining person, you want to look at what Newmont is going to do with that extra money. Are they going to raise their dividend? Are they going to increase their dividend? Are they going to announce share buybacks? Are they going to take the money and buy an Explorer? Are they going to take the money and a drill for, for, for more gold? I don’t know, but it’s, it’s what, it’s what, at this point, Newmont and firms like it, first majestic being another example, have done seemingly a very good job of quarter, quartering off their risks, reducing their all in sustaining costs and being prudent with their financial manager.

The next step for management is what will they do with the money that they’ve made? Will they become Texas hedgers, which is what happened in the eighties and say, Oh, we don’t have to hedge anything. Or will they hedge prudently at the same time add production? And I think Newmont is on the right path. News analysis, elementals, digital dividend. We wanted to cover that today, but the Newmont news came out. Elemental is offering its clients dividends in gold now, specifically, uh, and that’s not a very significant, uh, most people will look at that as not very significant because it’s just elemental, but tether is offering gold as a dividend.

Now, think of, if you’re old enough, think of what the world was like before money markets were invented. Your savings account got you 25 basis points, maybe one percentage point, and then money markets were invented and all of a sudden people were getting a money market making 9%. Well, now you’re creating these tether products, these stable coins, love them or hate the company that’s involved in it. But the blockchain concept is going to revolutionize money markets. It’s going to make a new type of money market. And that’ll be, I want to have my dividends paid in gold.

It’s going to be the Western version of China, allowing people to own gold. It’ll be blockchain, which has its own particular set of problems. But if you’re a hacker, don’t worry about it. It’s going to make you money. Data on deck today’s GDP and PCE, uh, PCE is pretty much calculated and known already GP could be a surprise. And the markets are acting like, I’ll tell you, the markets are just acting like, I mean, speaking about metals, the markets are acting like, look yesterday, let’s, let’s just go to the chart. All right.

Let’s do that yesterday, around one 30, uh, silver and gold took a shot, you know, to, uh, to the chin and the markets came off real hard. Let me pull up the hourly, if I can get that up here quickly. So where is that yesterday? Okay. Yeah. So basically at one 30, the market had a nice little dime and then it had a big rally. Now these dives at one 32 o’clock, they can be viewed as, uh, related to the, uh, the fed data that came out, uh, the fed minutes and the fed minutes were a little bit surprising, uh, on Wednesday.

But here, I’ll show you what I’m talking about. You started a draft down on Wednesday and then you started a draft down on Thursday at, uh, at two o’clock. So you’re starting these draft downs in the afternoons and then they’re being, then they’re being bought again. So, uh, it would seem to me that you’re, you’re getting these slams, but they’re being bought more aggressively and they’re being bought in front of data. So it’s kind of like, uh, let me put this in English for you. Um, inflation is going to come out. If inflation is really high, then you should buy gold because the fed’s not going to tighten.

And if inflation is really low, you should buy gold because the fed is going to ease. So the market, whether it’s right or wrong, is perceiving every data point as an opportunity to get some liquidity. Now, mind you, this is against the backdrop of, of, uh, uh, Wednesday’s fed minutes showed a surprise that they were actually talking about openly talking about raising rates, which I think is crazy, but who knows? Um, but that’s it. There’s, there’s the markets, uh, just touching based on silver. It’s good to be right. Even if you’re only right for a day, uh, it’s called the silver daily.

This is held. We’re back in the range. Of course, I want to get very bullish, but look at what’s going on. We had a 35%, a 40% drop. You know, we had these big ranges and now, you know, we’re up $2, but that’s a smaller range. Volatility is coming in. The market is catching its breath above $70. You got to love that. How could you not love that? You know, we’re talking about a market that dropped. Uh, I was on with CEO technician yesterday. We did the math or something like, or I’m sorry, I would know with John from a silver trade yesterday and we did the math and uh, something like 47% from top to bottom.

You got to love the fact that the market is basing 47% from top to bottom at 75, 80 bucks. I mean, this is an unreal market folks. Like if we had, it’s a conversation that John and I had, if we had said to you two years ago, the market would have a 50% retracement and be trading $75. You would have said that’s great. Well, it’s great. Okay. So let’s hope this ledge holds and I’ll be vindicated. If not, uh, I’ll be crying in my hat. Like everyone else will. I’m Vince. Have a great weekend.

We have plenty coming up this weekend and, uh, enjoy the day. Well, thank you, Vincent, as always for this morning’s mercantile show and thank you to everyone at home who is watching. Do you sure hope that you’ve had a great week so far here and appreciate you tuning in as we covered the twist and turns of the golden silver markets of which there have been plenty this year, last year, year before that, and a lot of years before that leading up to this. So I hope you found that helpful and did want to pass along a note from Dolly Varden Silver, who kindly brought us this morning’s show with Vince.

Dolly Varden did have some drill results out recently where they drilled 4.66 grams per ton gold over 48 meters and also an intercept of 52.15 grams per ton gold and 306 grams per ton silver over 1.01 meters at their home state deposit with Sean Cun Cun of Dolly Varden Silver. He is the CEO and he came and joined me on the show last week to walk through what they found here and let’s take a little listen. The red is demonstrating where the ore body is and that yellow is identifying where we have found a bend in the system.

And in that bend in the system is where we’re seeing things really open up in terms of consistent high grade, large, wide, silver and gold mineralization. And it’s a wonderful ore body. It’s super high grade. As you can see, it’s very close to surface. The results that we put out were on a gram meter basis, like 200 gram meters on a gold basis, which is two times what you want to see. So it’s 200% greater than economic geologists want to see to say, hey, this is a discovery. This is economic. So we’ve consistently found high grade gold and silver and these results just reiterate expansion potential and confirm a very, very, very high grade system.

Well, thank you, Sean. Sure. Appreciate that. It is really exciting to see how much silver they have gotten under their control since he took the company over just about six years ago. And certainly with silver in the 80s rather than the teens like it was back then. Good times for Dolly Varden silver and to hear the rest of those results in that call with Sean. Well, that video is coming your way now. [tr:trw].

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