Happy Saturday, Apes!
Pour the weekend double-double.
Five editions went out this week, and the tape did not sit still for a single one of them: copper flirted with a record, gold punched through a two-month high, and two of the biggest names in the business quietly paid each other to stop fighting.
Here are the five stories you opened most, ranked by open rate, with the honest version of each. Every headline links back to the full edition.
1. Barrick and Newmont Bury a $1.95 Billion Hatchet
Monday, August 10 (the week's most-opened edition)
Newmont handed Barrick $1.95 billion and folded its Fiberline and Mike developments into Nevada Gold Mines, while Barrick contributed its Fourmile project.
In exchange, Newmont dropped its objection to Barrick spinning out and listing its North American gold assets by year end.
The fight was over whether Barrick starved the joint venture to build Fourmile on the side. Neither side wanted a Nevada-sized legal headache dragging through a gold market this hot, so they traded cash and rock for a clean slate.
Why it mattered: this removed an overhang instead of creating one. Barrick's spinoff can now proceed without a lawsuit-shaped asterisk, and $1.95 billion landing inside 30 days is real firepower.
Skeptic's footnote: file it under bullish and boring, but don't expect the eventual IPO prospectus to dwell on how ugly this got behind closed doors.
2. Pan American Silver Banks a Record $300 Million on a Miss
Thursday, August 13
Pan American posted Q2 adjusted earnings of $0.73 a share on revenue of $1.12 billion, short of the street's $0.92 and $1.16 billion.
Silver production still hit 6.5 million ounces, the high end of guidance.
Weaker gold output did the damage.
None of that stopped a record $300 million going back to shareholders: roughly 4.4 million shares bought back plus a $0.184 dividend, on $344 million of attributable free cash flow and $3.2 billion of available liquidity.
Why it mattered: the cash machine is intact and the buyback is real.
The miss is a gold-output story, not a silver one.
Skeptic's footnote: one quarter of soft gold output is a stumble.
Two is a pattern.
Watch the next print before you decide which this was.
3. Gold Rips to a Two-Month High, and the Miners Outrun It Three to One
Wednesday, August 12
Comex December gold touched $4,502.70 an ounce, its highest print since mid-June, with spot running as high as $4,438.
Silver added as much as 2.4% to tag $66.25.
The trigger was a tame July CPI: prices up 0.1% on the month and 3.4% on the year.
Add China's central bank logging its 21st straight month of gold buying (roughly 20 tonnes in July, its biggest single addition since October 2023) and a Strait of Hormuz corridor still effectively shut, and you had three tailwinds blowing the same way.
Why it mattered: the metal was up about 9% since the end of July.
The equities ran up to three times that. Eldorado added 33% and Equinox 29% over the same stretch.
Skeptic's footnote: leverage cuts both ways.
A Fed-driven melt-up is not the same thing as a permanently repriced metal.
4. Copper Comes Four Tenths of a Cent From a Record
Tuesday, August 11
Comex copper touched $6.7005 a pound after Mitsubishi confirmed a boiler leak shut the Gresik smelter that processes Grasberg ore, with no restart date.
Cash metal on the LME traded $138 above the three-month contract, the widest premium since October and a textbook scarcity signal.
Aluminum got squeezed at the same time from a different direction: Norsk Hydro cut its Alunorte refinery to half capacity, and LME aluminum stockpiles fell to roughly 255,000 tonnes, the lowest since November 1990.
Why it mattered: the 2027 forward curve already trades above $7 a pound, so professional money is betting this scarcity outlasts the smelter repair.
Skeptic's footnote: the metal ripped while its own miners sold off.
Freeport fell 3%, Lundin 3.8%, First Quantum 1.8%.
That is the market pricing near-term chaos, not long-term confidence.
5. Faraday Copper Chases 18 Billion Pounds in Arizona
Friday, August 14
Faraday told The Northern Miner it expects confirmation drilling at BHP's former San Manuel mine to support a combined resource of more than 18 billion pounds of copper, once San Manuel and neighbouring Copper Creek are merged into one district.
BHP takes an effective 30% stake in exchange for handing over San Manuel.
There is real rock underneath the headline.
San Manuel processed about 800 million tonnes at 0.66% copper between 1955 and 1999, and Copper Creek already carries 421.9 million tonnes at 0.45% copper measured and indicated from a 2023 PEA.
At least 23,000 metres of drilling starts in Q4, funded from $126.2 million in cash.
Why it mattered: a BHP stake plus an 18% Lundin family position is about as credible a cap table as junior copper gets, and it landed inside a live squeeze.
Skeptic's footnote: 18 billion pounds is a target, not a line in a technical report.
BHP discarded the old core data, so none of that mining history counts until Faraday redrills it.
The Week in One Line
Two metals got squeezed by broken plumbing (a Grasberg smelter and a Brazilian alumina refinery), one Fed print lit the gold complex, and the biggest gold story of the week was two majors agreeing to stop suing each other.
Nobody found a new deposit.
Everybody made money anyway.
That is 2026 in a nutshell.
Keep your grades high, and your dilution low.
See you Monday, Apes.