Record High for Copper
Contributed Opinion

1. As of the date of this article, officers, contractors, shareholders, and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own securities of Fitzroy Minerals.
2. Michael Ballanger: I, or members of my immediate household or family, own securities of: Freeport-McMoRan, Fitzroy Minerals., and Marimaca Copper Corp. My company has a financial relationship with: None. My company has purchased stocks mentioned in this article for my management clients: None. I determined which companies would be included in this article based on my research and understanding of the sector.
3. Statements and opinions expressed are the opinions of the author and not of Streetwise Reports, Street Smart, or their officers. The author is wholly responsible for the accuracy of the statements. Streetwise Reports was not paid by the author to publish or syndicate this article. Streetwise Reports requires contributing authors to disclose any shareholdings in, or economic relationships with, companies that they write about. Any disclosures from the author can be found  below. Streetwise Reports relies upon the authors to accurately provide this information and Streetwise Reports has no means of verifying its accuracy. 
4. This article does not constitute investment advice and is not a solicitation for any investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her personal financial adviser and perform their own comprehensive investment research. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company. 

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Michael Ballanger Disclosures

This letter makes no guarantee or warranty on the accuracy or completeness of the data provided. Nothing contained herein is intended or shall be deemed to be investment advice, implied or otherwise. This letter represents my views and replicates trades that I am making but nothing more than that. Always consult your registered advisor to assist you with your investments. I accept no liability for any loss arising from the use of the data contained on this letter. Options and junior mining stocks contain a high level of risk that may result in the loss of part or all invested capital and therefore are suitable for experienced and professional investors and traders only. One should be familiar with the risks involved in junior mining and options trading and we recommend consulting a financial adviser if you feel you do not understand the risks involved.

Records were falling all over the place this week with the DJIA and S&P 500 closing at record highs despite slowing economic growth and geopolitical strife. However, the leadership emanating from the tech-heavy NASDAQ failed to register a new high as the semiconductor stocks were victimized by a volley of selling, stifling any attempt at record highs, with the index trading 13.5% off the record posted on June 22 as of Friday afternoon.

Despite massive spending in the field of "AI" for all of the component parts of this new, fledgling industry that has morphed into a modern version of the "Cold War", the mainstream economies ex-technology are simply muddling along. In fact, if you stripped out artificial intelligence infrastructure and related capital spending, estimates from firms like Apollo Global Management and Pantheon Macroeconomics show that broad U.S. economic growth would slow down to essentially flat, near 0.1%, revealing a technical recession or stagnation across the broader household and traditional business sectors.

If you are a copper bull (as am I) and you wonder why, in light of slowing growth, September copper touched record highs at USD $6.8665/lb. On Thursday, imagine the amount of copper that will be needed to supply the AI buildout in the coming months and years.

However, I have devoted more than enough time and effort in laying out my bullish thesis for owning copper ETF's (like Sprott Physical Copper ETF (SCOP:US)) and copper producers (like Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (FCX:NYSE)and Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. (IVN:TSX; IVPAF:OTCQX)). The real juice is in the junior developers (like Marimaca Copper Corp. (MARI:TSX; MARIF:OTCMKTS; MC2:ASX) and Fitzroy Minerals Inc. (FTZ:TSX.V; FTZFF:OTCQX)), but then again, I have been a shareholder of most of these names on and off since mid-2023, when I added copper to the "preferred metals" list that included, of course, gold and silver.

The gold and silver markets put in their respective lows for the year in late-June for gold and mid-July for silver and have since been on a tear to the upside, jolting the hibernating perma-bulls from their places of refuge and back onto their keyboards where they have been bombarding the virtual universe with words like "breakout" and phrases like "the bottom is in" all followed, of course, by several exclamation marks and in "bold Italic" as font.

When we took out the June lows back on July 26, it negated my "BUY" signal and sent me scurrying to the safety of the sidelines. Since then, I have been looking for new lows and have treated any rallies as "bear market rallies," and despite a torrent of protest verging upon ridicule, that is exactly what I am calling the rally this week.

To be sure, gold broke out of the downtrend line drawn off the March peak, but silver has yet to come anywhere close to reversing the downtrend drawn off the January peak. Gold needs a 2-day close above $4,500 and silver a 2-day close above $70.34 for me to start sounding the bullhorn. In fact, if I did not carry a lifelong love of gold and silver dating back to the late 1970's, I would probably short gold at current levels and silver about $5 higher. Both metals are in bear markets as defined by conventional technical analysis, so until we get definitive closes above those levels, I have to either stand aside or get short. Mind you, I own a ton of gold juniors, so I would not actually be getting "short" but instead "hedged" against a downturn in my egregiously overweight metals portfolio.

The silver market, being the focus last January of an incredible dose of "FOMO" by traders and investors very new to the wonderful world of silver speculation, is down 48.88% from the January 29^th blow-off top and has graciously allowed these newbie silver bugs an ample dollop of capital losses to be applied against their tech stock winnings from 2025 and 2026.

In other words, it is the same bitter pill that they had to swallow when the silver promoters or "influencers" as they are now called, peddled the infamous "SilverSqueeze" narrative back in late January of 2021, driving the price to $30 on the promise that retail buying would cripple the bullion bank behemoths and send them into a frantic short squeeze. Well, that simply never happened, and it left a great many newbies permanently scalded, which took until May of 2024 to overcome when silver finally and decisively broke out to $30.

To an extent, the January "FOMO-driven" spike to $124 was even worse because by the time mid-January arrived, every armchair quarterback with a laptop and an internet connection was a) long up to their back teeth and b) posting hourly how and why silver was going to $500.

The resulting debacle resulted in what has morphed into a six-month bear market, with thousands of newbie traders carried out in bodybags never to wander anywhere close to the silver market again. Stated simply, the remaining longs that are left have average costs between here and $124, creating a continuous wall of resistance all the way up. Near-term, the convergence zone is between $69.15 and $70.34 (basis September silver), and until prices better that zone convincingly, I will be using blinders and earplugs every time I see one of the "silversqueeze charlatans" sprinkling bullish pixie-dust my way. The only voice to which I will pay any heed whatsoever will be price and volume.

The Juniors

The junior resource sector has been plagued by the battering ram called "risk off", a condition of which I first warned all subscribers back in early March citing what I said then was going to be a very challenging summer. As backup to what was surely a very annoying and thoroughly unpopular call, I threw in seasonality charts for the TSX Venture Exchange, confirming the seasonally-weak months of June and August, but what really had me convinced was the eary silence of the junior resource constabulary that are found night-and-day on the podcast circuit pumping the tires of the last company that paid them a fee.

Those pompom-wagging cheerleaders have gone absolutely AWOL since the conclusion of PDAC last March to the extent that websites like Stockhouse.com and CEO.CA are down to a smattering of posts when compared to the torrent of keyboard discourse last January. The confluence of the blow-off top in late January and the domination of the speculative narrative propagated by the "AI" crowd created a total dereliction of investment flows into the junior resource space. Such dereliction is surprising, as it would pertain to the junior copper companies given the record price achieved this past week, but when legions of speculators get laid out by the gold and silver space, copper becomes "just another junior" to be avoided.

Alas, I have seen this unfortunate state of affairs countless times over what is now a fifty-year career carving up markets in the Canadian junior resource sector. In fact, when it gets so "black bearish" that people even refuse your phone call, you just know that an important low is approaching. For over thirty years, I have used the August 15 – September 15 period as my "window of accumulation," resulting in a few extraordinary pickoffs that turned out to be generational buys, which this year will most certainly be copper deals. The best example from days of yore was diamond explorer Mountain Province Mining Inc., which was trading near its 52-week low at $.40 around the end of August 1995.

The diamond space had gone "no bid" after the Kettle River group of companies was "outed" for salting diamond core by JV partner Kennecott, resulting in my stock getting cut in half by the end of the summer of that year. To assist the company with a few support bids, I layered a number of "BUY" orders in under the market with the last one a 50,000-share bid at $.38 (the 52-week low) and, lo and behold, on the final trading day of the month, I got filled with perhaps ten minutes left in the session. The rest, as they say, is history, with March 5th, 1996, ushering in a "life-altering event" when the company reported a large intercept of gem-quality diamonds of extremely high grade at their AK-5034 kimberlite pipe. The stock topped out at $9.80 that year for a 2,478% return on that late August/2025 purchase. Mind you, there were more than a few others that barely broke even, but my experiences over the decades have trained me to get very aggressive after August 15, especially with fully-funded companies that have defined resources.

By the way, speaking of diamonds, in November 2011, the Oppenheimer family officially agreed to sell their remaining 40% stake in De Beers to global mining conglomerate Anglo American for $5.1 billion USD in cash, valuing the enterprise at over USD $12.2 billion. Today, the entire De Beers entity is valued at approximately $1.18 billion to $2.3 billion USD, reflecting a massive valuation collapse due to a structural crisis in the natural diamond market.

How the mighty have fallen…