Before Saturday’s shooting at the White House correspondent’s dinner added another layer of noise, equity and commodity markets were already pulling in different directions. 

Investors in US equities stayed upbeat, with dip-buyers piling back into AI names and hopes building around ceasefire talks that could reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Commodity traders weren’t quite as convinced. Oil prices kept climbing, hinting that geopolitical risk and the drag from higher energy costs may not be going away anytime soon.

In the Weekly Market Digest, concerns about supply disruptions and a protracted timeline to normalcy, with their impact on global inflation and growth, kept precious metals, equities, and industrial metals, along with critical minerals and equities levered to them, underwater. 

The Exploration Insights Portfolio eked out a modest gain last week but still outperformed the major resource equity benchmarks across both precious metals and industrial/critical minerals.

Performance was supported by a handful of strong contributors, including a grassroots explorer in Finland following an M&A bid by a major producer, a rare-earth element developer delivering a major catalyst on its flagship asset in Brazil, and a grassroots copper-gold explorer in eastern Peru providing an update on its flagship main project.  

In other Stock Talk news, I cover updated drill results from a Top Pick precious metal developer in northwest Argentina, another in Australia, and a copper explorer in Kazakhstan.