North of the early-stage copper-gold project I toured in northern British Columbia this past week lies Mount Edziza Provincial Park, home to a volcanic complex formed during the late Miocene. Its eruptions produced extensive deposits of volcanic glass, better known as obsidian.

Valued for its razor-sharp edges, obsidian was quarried by the Tahltan people for more than 10,000 years and traded extensively throughout northwestern North America. 

It seems that long before the TSX Venture, local First Nations had already recognized the value of discovering, developing, and trading natural resources.

In the Weekly Market Digest, despite a pullback in crude oil prices last week, both benchmarks gained more than 20% during July on escalating geopolitical tensions involving the US, Iran, and the broader Middle East. As expected, the US Federal Reserve left its benchmark rates unchanged, and the decision weighed on the US dollar, contributing to a mixed performance in precious metals. However, persistent inflation concerns continued to push real interest rates higher, acting as a headwind for precious metal equities. Industrial metals generally strengthened, although the corresponding equity benchmarks remained mixed.

The Exploration Insights portfolio declined in line with the weakness in precious metal equity ETFs but below the mixed performance of industrial metal benchmarks. This decline was primarily driven by profit-taking in two Top Picks, although gains from a silver-gold explorer, which discovered a new zone within its district-scale land package in southern Chile, and a Top Pick royalty generator helped offset the weakness somewhat.

In Stock Talk, a REE developer attracts the attention of the Department of Energy while reserve expansion at a flagship royalty supports future cash flow for a royalty generator. Sampling and drilling extend the footprint of a copper-gold system in Peru and a gold-antimony system in Australia.