Happy Thursday!

Pour the double-double, blow the dust off the core boxes, and let's see who hit something before the desk clears out for the weekend.

Gold's still nursing its geopolitical hangover, but the juniors didn't get the memo as the TSX-V ripped nearly 3% and copper punched clean through $6/lb.

A Nova Scotia developer posted infill grades that make its resource look conservative, an OTC junior bought itself an "AI" headline, and Emerita stacked five payable metals into one skinny metre.

Oh, and silver quietly booked the year of its life while everyone stared at the Strait of Hormuz.

🥇 Gold (spot): $4,109/oz 📉
🥈 Silver (spot): $60/oz 📉
🔌 Copper: $6.20/lb 📈
☢️ Uranium (U₃O₈ spot): $85.55/lb 📉
🛢️ WTI Crude: $71.80/bbl 📉
🔥 Natural Gas (Henry Hub): $3.22/MMBtu 📉
🍁 TSX-V Composite: 923 📈
💵 U.S. Dollar (DXY): 101.07 📈

Gold and silver are soft on a firmer dollar, but copper's ripping and the juniors' index is up ~3%.

Risk appetite is quietly leaking back into the sandbox.

What happened. NexGold Mining $NXGCF ( ▲ 5.49% ) dropped fresh reverse-circulation infill assays from its Goldboro gold project in Nova Scotia, 12.06 g/t gold over 6.0 metres and 3.84 g/t over 18.0 metres — and bumped its 2026 RC infill program from roughly 30,000 metres to 40,000 metres.

Why it happened. Infill drilling isn't about finding new rock; it's about de-risking the rock you already have — tightening the drill spacing to firm up grade continuity ahead of a mine plan. Hot holes on infill say the resource model isn't overcooked.

What it means for your position. Grade continuity is the whole ballgame for a developer trying to finance a build, and a 33% program expansion says management likes what the core is showing. Skeptic's footnote: infill by design chases the known high-grade zones, so don't smear 12 g/t across the whole deposit — watch for an updated resource, and for how they fund the build, because that's where the dilution or a debt package walks in.

👉 See the assays

Asia Broadband $AABB ( ▲ 0.77% ) inked a licensing deal for AI-assisted exploration and mine-optimization software to steer a 15,000-metre Phase 2 program at its Picachos IV gold property in Mexico.

So what. AI narrows where you drill; it doesn't put metal in the ground. Judge this one on the Phase 2 assays, not the announcement.

👉 Read the announcement

Emerita Resources $EMO.TSX ( ▲ 1.41% ) pulled a genuine grab-bag at its El Cura deposit in Spain's Iberian Pyrite Belt: 3.9 metres grading 3.8% copper, 0.9% lead, 1.6% zinc, 2.81 g/t gold and 71.26 g/t silver, including a richer 2.6 m at 5.5% copper.

Narrow, under four metres, but volcanogenic massive sulphide systems live and die on stacked lenses, and a hole carrying five payable metals keeps a polymetallic story interesting while the prefeasibility study runs toward Q3.

So what. One skinny intercept doesn't make a mine, and El Cura still has to clear permitting and its PFS, but with copper ripping to $6.20/lb, a five-metal VMS lens is exactly the kind of optionality that gets a suitor's attention.

👉 Dig into the assays

Everyone's glued to gold's geopolitical whipsaw.

Meanwhile, silver quietly booked a ~150% one-year return, clawing to a decade-plus high near $60/oz before this week's little dip.

The gold-to-silver ratio spent the year screaming that silver was cheap, and for once, the market actually listened.

That's the core log for today. Keep your grades high, your dilution low, and your orders in before the desk clears out for the weekend. See you next week. ⛏️