Lundin Gold Strikes a 242-Gram Monster, and PrairieSky's Royalty Machine Just Posted a 42% Quarter

Happy Tuesday!

Pour the double-double, because gold just face-planted through the $4,000 floor and the junior index decided to throw a party anyway.

Lundin Gold found a bonanza vein that would make a vault blush, Nova Minerals finally got Uncle Sam's paperwork stamped, and Alberta's data-centre boom just got a lot more real.

Let's get into it.

As of Oct 27, 2026, afternoon ET. Source: Kitco (gold, silver); Trading Economics / Yahoo Finance (copper); Yellow Cake / Numerco (uranium, week of Oct 23); EnergyNow (WTI); Yahoo Finance / Investing.com (natural gas, futures-implied); YCharts (TSX-V Composite, today's close; DXY).

🥇 Gold (spot): $4,058.40/oz 📈
🥈 Silver (spot): $54.21/oz 📈
🔌 Copper: $6.62/lb 📈
☢️ Uranium (U₃O₈ spot): $89.75/lb 📉
🛢️ WTI Crude: $102.10/bbl 📈
🔥 Natural Gas (Henry Hub): $3.05/MMBtu 📉
🍁 TSX-V Composite: 838.48 📈
💵 U.S. Dollar (DXY): 101.90 📈

Bullion's having its worst week in over four months, oil's catching a bid on Middle East jitters, and the junior index shrugged it all off to post a solid day.

What happened. Lundin Gold Inc. ($LUGDF ( ▲ 2.5% )) dropped a batch of near-mine drill results on Monday, and the headline hole is a knee-buckler. At the Bonza Sur zone, hole BLP-2026-559 returned 242.64 g/t gold over 3.30 metres, the highest-grade interval ever recorded at that deposit. Over at FDNS, hole FDN-C26-535 hit 124.27 g/t Au over 11.00 metres, including a single metre running a jaw-dropping 1,290.00 g/t. The company also just started conversion drilling at a brand-new zone, FDN East, buried less than 100 metres from existing mine infrastructure.

Why it happened. This isn't a wildcat swing. Lundin's FDNS zone already carries an inaugural 0.54-million-ounce reserve declared just eighteen months after discovery, and the company has five underground rigs and three surface rigs chasing extensions around its cash-flowing, debt-free Fruta del Norte complex in Ecuador. Bonanza hits like this are what happens when you keep drilling the edges of a mine that already works.

What it means for your position. Lundin Gold isn't a speculative name, it's closer to sector ballast, the kind of producer generalist money parks in when it wants gold exposure without discovery risk. A reserve-growing hit this strong, landing the same week bullion cracked below $4,000, is a reminder that company-specific rock can still outrun a soft tape. Watch for the next resource update to capture Bonza Sur and FDN East.

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Camino Minerals Corporation (TSXV: COR) and partner Nittetsu Mining just wrapped the Critical Engineering Phase on the Puquios copper project in Chile, with global EPCM heavyweight Ausenco running the study, and the two companies held the official kickoff meeting for the next phase: full detailed engineering.

So what. If you're in junior copper for the long cycle, this is exactly the kind of quiet de-risking step that eventually feeds a bigger re-rate; just don't expect it to move the stock on its own tomorrow.

👉 Dig in

Nova Minerals Limited ($NVA ( ▲ 6.71% )) just landed final approval from Alaska's Department of Natural Resources for its Antimony project, covering mining, processing, and refining, roughly three months after filing. Phase 1 is already fully funded by a US$43.4 million U.S. Department of War award, chasing military-grade antimony trisulfide and high-purity antimony metal, with long-lead equipment already bought and delivered. Management is pointing at 2027 production.

So what. This is one of the more widely-traded speculative names in the space, clearing its last real regulatory hurdle on a metal China keeps squeezing on exports, with Uncle Sam's cheque already in the bank. The permitting risk is gone; the execution risk (building the thing on schedule) is next.

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What happened. PrairieSky Royalty Ltd. ($PSK.TSX ( ▲ 0.3% )) reported Q3 2026 results: funds from operations of $127.9 million, up 42% year over year, on production of 26,936 BOE/d. Net debt fell $63.6 million (34%) in the quarter alone and is now down 56% year to date, to $123.0 million. The board bumped the dividend to $0.265/share for Q4.

Why it happened. Third-party operators kept drilling PrairieSky's land, hard: Clearwater heavy oil royalty volumes up 25%, Mannville Stack up 41% on a record 25 spuds, and the Duvernay logging 30 spuds in the quarter (81 year to date versus 46 a year ago). That's a royalty company getting paid on someone else's capital program, which is the whole business model working exactly as designed.

What it means for your position. PrairieSky is one of the cleanest reads on how much drilling capital is actually going into the Montney, Clearwater, and Duvernay right now, and the answer is a lot, even with WTI averaging under $86 through the quarter. A 42% FFO jump and a halved net debt load is as good a guidance surprise as the patch gets without the company drilling a single well itself.

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TransAlta Corporation ($TA.TSX ( ▲ 4.88% )) is the power supplier behind the Boreal Technology Hub, a Brookfield- and CPP Investments-backed AI data-centre campus proposed for TransAlta's Keephills generating station site west of Edmonton. New this week: Parkland County's mayor expects a building-permit application within months; phase one is pegged at $5 billion in capital spending and roughly 1,000 construction jobs, and Alberta's grid operator has already allocated 230 MW of power to the project, with room to scale to 1,600 MW.

The skeptic's footnote: this is still an MOU-stage project working through municipal permitting, not a signed, shovels-in-the-ground deal, and Alberta's grid operator says it's fielding more than forty data-centre connection requests representing about 26 GW of demand province-wide. Not all of that gets built.

So what. TransAlta sits on the supply side of a genuine AI power land rush, and 230 MW already allocated is a real number, not a press-release aspiration. The next catalyst is whether TransAlta needs to add its own incremental gas-fired generation to keep feeding deals like this as they scale.

👉 Dig in

Enerflex Ltd. ($EFXT ( ▲ 2.52% )) added two independent directors on Tuesday: David Primrose, CFO of Finning International, and Mary Zappone, a Warburg Pincus senior advisor and former CEO of Sundyne. The moves follow board chair Fernando Assing's retirement.

So what. A quiet board refresh, sure, but a Finning CFO and a private-equity operator joining the compression and services shop's board is a tell that Enerflex is gearing up for a heavier capex cycle (think data-centre power and LNG feedgas infrastructure), not just managing the status quo.

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One number says it all: gold just posted its worst weekly drop in over four months, down about 4%, while the TSX-V Composite turned around and gained 1.6% in a single session. Same market, same day, two completely different moods.

Keep your grades high and your dilution low. See you tomorrow. ⛏️