Global markets breathed a sigh of relief Friday morning after Iran's Foreign Minister declared the Strait of Hormuz "completely open" … until it wasn’t. 

Within 48 hours, conflicting signals from the US administration and a counter-response from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard turned commercial traffic into a game of U-turns at sea. 

And people still think commodity trading is about spreadsheets.

In the Weekly Market Digest, US equity markets rallied to new 52-week highs while volatility declined, as investors priced in the perceived reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the associated drop in oil prices. But now that optimism looks premature. Industrial and critical minerals rallied alongside equities leveraged to electrification and non-carbon energy. A weaker US dollar and lower real interest rates lifted precious metals and their associated equities. But note the news of the closure of the critical chokepoint for energy and other products will reverse some of these moves on Monday.  

The Exploration Insights Portfolio delivered a strong return, outperforming the major resource equity ETFs. Performance was driven by outsized gains from a Kazakhstan-focused grassroots copper-gold explorer and a US-based critical mineral producer. 

The Rant centers on a (better late than never) 2025 review of the financial performance of a peer group of North American-listed precious metal equities; therefore, I will defer several updates until next week from a pair of silver-dominant developers in Argentina and Chile, including a milestone technical report published by a rare earth developer.