In 1942, a chemist named Frank Spedding walked into a lab at Iowa State and started turning rare earth oxides into pure metals. The military needed uranium for the Manhattan Project. Spedding figured out how to do it — and along the way, his team at Ames Laboratory cracked the code for refining a dozen other rare earths too.

For the next four decades, America led the world in rare earth metallurgy. The oxides came out of the ground. The metals went into magnets. The magnets went into weapons, jets, and satellites. The whole chain lived on American soil.

Then it left. By the mid-1990s, China had undercut every Western producer on price. The mines closed. The refineries shut down. And the metallurgy — the step where you turn a powder into a metal that can become a magnet — moved to Baotou.

That's the step American Rare Earths (ASX: ARR) and Novex just signed a deal to bring back. The two companies announced a memorandum of understanding this week to develop oxide-to-metal conversion at Halleck Creek, Wyoming — the largest known rare earth deposit in the United States. Halleck Creek holds roughly 2.63 billion tonnes of rare earth ore. The US Export-Import Bank has issued a $456 million letter of interest. The plan covers neodymium, praseodymium, samarium, dysprosium, and terbium — every magnet metal that matters.

But here's the problem. The US does not have a single commercial facility that turns separated rare earth oxides into magnet-grade metals. That step — the one Spedding mastered 80 years ago — is done almost entirely in China.

It's not that the chemistry is lost. Novex evaluated several workable routes: fluoride conversion, calciothermic reduction, and molten salt electrolysis. The last one came out cleanest — no need for anhydrous hydrogen fluoride, no rare earth metal consumed as a reductant. The science works. The question is whether anyone can do it at scale, at a cost that closes, before the clock runs out.

And the clock is loud. Starting January 1, 2027, US defense contractors face restrictions on magnets made with Chinese rare earths. That's 133 days from today. An MoU signed this week won't produce a single kilogram of metal by then.

Jack Lifton, co-chair of the Critical Minerals Institute, put it plainly this week: the announcement is not the achievement. The first commercial shipment is. Until then, the gap between America's ore and America's magnets stays wide open.

Right now, you can buy a dollar's worth of gold for about 36 cents.

That sounds impossible. Here's how it's real.

The major gold miners are throwing off record cash flow — even after gold's recent pullback. The four largest have never had this much free cash on hand. Ever. At today's gold price, they're running margins as high as 75% — the most profitable they have ever been.

Which hands them a problem.

Go here to see the problem — and why the majors are about to go on a shopping spree for the ages.

When a major gold miner makes record profits, it does one of two things: hand the cash back to shareholders, or buy the best junior mining assets to secure future production.

And here's the piece the market is missing:

The best junior assets are still priced as if gold were stuck at $1,800 an ounce — not north of $4,000, where it trades today.

So the majors are staring at their own future production shrinking, sitting on record cash, looking at top-tier junior assets trading at a fraction of what that gold is worth at today's price.

They don't have a choice. They buy — or their output keeps shrinking until they're out of business.

That's how you buy a dollar of gold for 36 cents: you own the junior before the major is forced to pay up for it.

The gap between what these assets are worth and what they trade for has a name. I call it the Golden Anomaly. It only appears early in a gold bull market, and it closes fast — usually the moment the majors start writing cheques.

So you can pay full price after the gap closes…

Or buy the dollar for 36 cents while the Anomaly still exists.

My name is Garrett Goggin, CFA, CMT, and it's why Porter Stansberry recently called me:

"THE most knowledgeable gold investor in the world."

Go here to see my Golden Anomaly portfolio — and the three names next on the majors' shopping list.

The Interior Department proposed a deep-sea mining auction covering 67 million acres of seabed near the Northern Mariana Islands. The sale is set for December 16 in California. Leases would go through competitive bidding for deposits of cobalt, manganese, and nickel used in batteries, defense, and electronics. It's the second such proposal — last month, the administration put 31 million acres off American Samoa on the block. Environmental groups oppose the move. The governor of the Northern Mariana Islands hasn't taken a position, citing a need for more environmental data.

The bull market in critical minerals is here. That's the call from InvestorIntel's latest weekly report, which argues the driver is not demand — it's China putting its export controls back in play. Industrial buyers are stockpiling heavy rare earths ahead of November 10, when suspended controls could snap back. The buying has already changed costs and contract terms months before any license is actually denied. Lifton says the West still can't answer the one question that matters: can it produce finished products at scale without Chinese cooperation?

Rare Earth Exchanges reported this week that China's Rare Earth Price Index held at 259.5, but the number hides a growing split. Inside China, terbium oxide trades at $989 to $998 per kilogram. Outside, REEx has documented trades at $3,600 to $5,000 or more — roughly four times the domestic reference. Yttrium is even more extreme: under $10 per kilogram in China, but above $1,200 in some Western transactions. REEx warns that neither side reflects real market pricing. China's numbers are shaped by quotas and policy. Western trades are over-the-counter, confidential, and priced by availability. For corporate buyers, a published assessment is a snapshot — not necessarily the price you'll pay.

Jack Lifton, Co-Chair, Critical Minerals Institute
June 10, 2026

Every rare earth investor knows neodymium. Fewer know samarium — but the Pentagon does. Samarium-cobalt magnets hold their strength past 300°C, well above the point where neodymium magnets fail. That makes SmCo the default for jet engines, missile fins, and satellite reaction wheels. The raw oxide is one of the cheaper rare earths — just a few dollars per kilogram inside China. But turning it into magnet-grade metal requires the same oxide-to-metal step the US lost decades ago. This week, American Rare Earths named samarium as a target metal for production at Halleck Creek, Wyoming — a first step toward domestic SmCo feedstock in a generation.

The DRC banned exports of copper and cobalt concentrates effective June 29, with the order going public August 6. Copper hit its highest price since January on the London Metal Exchange. The move aims to force domestic refining and retain more mineral value — the same playbook China ran with rare earths a decade ago.

— Reuters

Australia's Lynas and South Korea's JS Link will build a 3,000-tonne-per-year NdFeB magnet factory near Kuantan, Malaysia. Lynas is investing A$50 million for an approximately 4.58% equity stake in JS Link. The feedstock agreement runs through 2038 — three countries, one supply chain.

— GuruFocus

USA Rare Earth (NASDAQ: USAR) reported second-quarter revenue of $5.8 million, below the Street's $8 million estimate. Cash on hand: $1.53 billion. The shareholder vote on the Serra Verde acquisition is set for August 28.

— GlobeNewswire

MP Materials reported Q2 revenue of $108.5 million and adjusted EBITDA of $28.5 million. Rare earth production and sales volumes improved from the prior year as the company continues expanding downstream at Mountain Pass and Fort Worth.

— 24/7 Wall St.