This is a bittersweet issue of New Energy because it’s the last one we will write under the Mangrove Investor banner

We will continue to publish this content under a new publisher, Paradigm Press.

Your current subscription will reset for a full year. We will launch the new product in December 2025, so your subscription will simply roll into Paradigm. We don’t have a name for the project yet. We’ll let you know as soon as it’s settled.

One thing that we will do is broaden the scope of the research to include more precious metals. New Energy missed a ripping bull market by focusing too closely on special industrial metals.

The other reason we want to expand our reach is the government. The current administration continues to issue grants and loans to promising mining projects. However, they also clawed back money from previous recipients, as we discussed in the weekly update.

If you missed it:

The current administration is unraveling the entire new energy strategy. According to Politico, the Department of Energy (DOE) has an $8 billion “kill list” on electrical projects. These are projects that relate to renewable energy.

And,

The DOE cut five grants in the second week of October. These were $700 million in grants for battery companies Ascend Elements, American Battery Technology Co., Anovion and ICL Specialty Products.

Most of the cancelled grants came from the 2021 infrastructure law. This bipartisan legislation appeared to signal the energy shift the U.S. needed. Four years later, the new administration is cutting ties and pulling back whatever capital is left.

This undermines the work we did at New Energy over the past four years. We believe that there are many opportunities in natural resources outside of energy metals. We need to broaden our research to meet the moment.

That’s where Paradigm comes in. They agree with our outlook on natural resources markets. The demand tailwinds continue for specific metals. And the government supports these new projects. The capital that we saw flow into battery metal projects are now going into other strategic metals.

Here are a few examples:

• Perpetua Resources – Stibnite Gold Project (antimony production) – $59.4 million
• Graphite One – Graphite mining and processing – $37.5 million
• Talon Nickel – Tamarack Project (nickel production) – $20.6 million
• Electra Battery Materials – Ontario cobalt refinery – $20 million
• Jervois Mining – Cobalt mining – $15 million
• Lomiko Metals – La Loutre Project (graphite production) – $8.3 million
• South32 – Hermanos Project (manganese production) – $20 million
• Doe Run Resources – Hydrometallurgical plant (nickel/cobalt processing) – $7 million
• Stillwater Critical Minerals – Nickel/Cobalt/Copper/Chromium mining – $50 million
• Fireweed Metals – Mactung Project (tungsten) – $15.8 million
• Global Advanced Metals – High Purity Niobium Oxide Production – $26.4 million
• Nano One Materials – Lithium Iron Phosphate Cathodes – $12.9 million
• MP Materials – Mountain Pass Mine and Facility (heavy rare earth metals) – $150 million

As you can see, the government is pushing funding into mineral exploration. These are all recent investments in these companies. As you can see, there will be clear winners and losers going forward. We will focus on those areas that offer the best reward for our risk. But we will also include precious metals.

All the metals are going through a repricing cycle. As the world’s governments debase their paper currencies, metals’ prices must adjust.

That’s why gold prices are skyrocketing now:

Silver prices lagged for a while, but caught up recently:

This trend is precious metals prices reacting to inflation. It’s like what we saw with home prices:

From 2000 to 2022, the average U.S. home price rose from about $160,000 to a peak of $460,000. That’s a 187% increase in home prices over that period. This is a response to inflation and demand.

Gold prices move in a similar way. Gold is an insurance policy against devaluing currencies. And while those home prices are in the U.S., the whole world fought inflation over the past decade.

It’s not surprising that gold prices soared. Historically, gold is a haven asset. You can’t tariff it, sanction it, or devalue it. That’s why central banks around the world now hold more gold than U.S. dollars. It’s the first time since 1996 that the world held fewer dollars than gold bars.

The World Gold Council forecasts that Central Banks will buy between 750 to 900 tons in 2025. That estimate comes on the heels of a 28% increase in buying in the third quarter of this year.

With that bullish forecast, we want to add our first gold explorer to the portfolio.

Prospector Metals (TSXV: PPP) – Dr. Rob Carpenter is Back

I met Rob Carpenter in 2006, when he was CEO of Kaminak Gold. We hit it off immediately. Rob, like me, is a nerdy geologist (in the best way). He has a series of discoveries under his belt, including the Angilak uranium project and the Coffee gold mine.

In 2016, major gold miner Goldcorp acquired Kaminak Gold for C$520 million. The deal centered on the Coffee gold project.

He’s one of my good friends and a go-to if I have questions about a project. We briefly worked together on a gold project in Ontario back in 2022. He stepped away from the junior mining sector to be a geology professor for a while. Now he’s back and on to his next discovery.

And make no mistake, this is an exciting new discovery. On October 1^st, the company announced a forty-four-meter intersection of 13.8 grams per ton (g/t) gold and 1.84% copper at their ML Project’s North Vein. This is an outstanding drill hole.

Even more exciting, this was a “blind” discovery. Loose rocks cover the surface of this area (called the “Tess zone”). That makes it difficult to see what’s beneath. However, geologic mapping and prospecting led the team to believe that it was worth a drill hole.

That’s how great geologists work. They do basic science, create a hypothesis, and test it. In this case, the data led to a high-grade gold and copper zone.

The market loved the result:

Don’t worry about that massive spike in the stock price. That’s expected after a drill hole like that. We can expect the stock to ease lower as early shareholders take profits. That gives us an opportunity to build a position before the company reports any more drill results.

And we want to.

The company is a C$98 million junior mining company with a great drill hole. It has about 107 million shares outstanding. It raised C$5 million in May 2025 to fund the drill program. B2Gold (NYSE: BTO), a $5.7 billion gold miner, owns 9.9% of the company as part of that financing.

This exploration company has all the qualities we want in an exploration company: great leadership, geological proof of concept (with those drill results), and strong support from B2Gold.

That should provide them with a strong foundation to continue to explore and succeed.

Action to Take: Buy Prospector Metals (TSXV: PPP)

You don’t have to rush into this position. In fact, use a limit order to build a position over the next week or so. Particularly on days when the gold price falls.

This will be the last pick before the new publication begins. There won’t be a New Energy publication in December. Instead, you should get the products from Paradigm. We are developing the product now, so look for more information coming soon.

For the Good,

Matt Badiali and the Mangrove Investor Team