The M&E Dispatch // 113

Nvidia’s loop needs your copper. Who blinks first?

Author

Lee Tengum
October 10, 2025

Hello Everyone,

Heading into the Thanksgiving long weekend, I keep glancing at the old silver coffee service on the sideboard and realizing it now equals a mortgage payment. Silver through $51, gold past $4,000, bitcoin streaking, pick your rocket.

Nice fireworks, sure.

But the more interesting thing isn’t the price action; it’s the split-screen economy those tickers reveal.

On one screen: an AI-financed merry-go-round where the same dollars orbit the same handful of companies, investors funding customers who buy from suppliers who invest back into the investors. It’s dazzling, frictionless, and infinitely self-reinforcing. You can practically hear the whir of capital as it loops: chips fund models that justify more chips that raise valuations that finance more models. Narratives compound; multiples levitate.

On the other screen: the linear world where value still begins with a shovel, a haul truck, a mill, and a grid humming at 60 hertz.

You extract, process, ship, repeat.

No loop, just physics, permits, payroll, and the power bill.

Commodity prices break records, yet miners trade like they’re one bad quarter from a stern lecture. Banks that could finance a lithium project in six months can buy NVDA in six seconds, and increasingly, they do.

The irony is almost comical. The circular screen cannot exist without the linear one.

Data centers don’t run on press releases; they run on copper and electrons. EVs and solar don’t care about your P/E; they care about silver in contact points, lithium in cells, and rare earths in magnets. The circular economy has built a machine that mints paper wealth; the linear economy supplies the atoms that keep the machine alive.

Some of the smartest outfits in mining are quietly exploiting that tension. Call it windfall margins: when price rips while costs lag, every extra dollar falls straight to cash.

Streamers (mining streaming & royalty companies), meanwhile, have discovered a near-circular angle, exposure to upside with fewer operating headaches. And a subset of producers is nudging up the chain, chemicals, components, even strategic equity, trying to stitch themselves into the loop rather than standing outside it, hat in hand.

Which brings me back to that silver coffee set. Its value isn’t the product of a loop; it’s the proof there are still things the loop can’t conjure, scarcity, weight, utility.

In a world of infinite screenshots, atoms remain oddly persuasive.

So here’s the observation and the itch I can’t scratch: if the circular economy keeps capturing the multiples while the linear economy keeps providing the materials, who blinks first, the market that prices the story, or the market that supplies the metal? And the question I’ll pose to both sides this weekend: when the loops inevitably need more copper, lithium, and silver to keep spinning, do the circles finally invite the lines inside, or do the lines, at last, name their price?

// The Dirt

🔥 Top 3 Headlines to Watch

  1. NioBay Metals (ON) — Ontario issues a new 3-year exploration permit for the James Bay Niobium project; work plan adjusted to address Moose Cree FN water-management concerns.
    https://niobaymetals.com/niobay-confirme-la-reception-dun-permis-dexploration-pour-son-projet-james-bay-niobium/

  2. Radisson Mining (QC) — Closes a $25.0M bought-deal share offering to advance the O’Brien gold project in Abitibi.
    https://www.radissonmining.com/press-releases/radisson-announces-closing-of-brokered-financing-for-25-million/

  3. Delta Resources (ON) — Launches environmental baseline program and advances Phase II drilling at Delta-1, Thunder Bay.
    https://www.deltaresources.ca/news/delta-resources-completes-regional-till-survey-commences-environmental-baseline-program-and-advances-phase-ii-drilling-at-delta-1-in-thunder-bay-ontario/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=delta-resources-completes-regional-till-survey-commences-environmental-baseline-program-and-advances-phase-ii-drilling-at-delta-1-in-thunder-bay-ontario

🛠 Exploration & Development Highlights

💰 Financings & Market Moves

🧬 Corporate & Policy

🌄 On the Horizon

  • Permitting momentum in Ontario & Quebec — NioBay’s permit and Delta’s baseline program point to steady de-risking for critical minerals and gold projects.

  • Financing window still open for explorers — Radisson’s $25M, CanAlaska’s up to $15M, and Homerun’s approvals suggest selective capital remains available for compelling theses.

  • Geophysics-first target sharpening — KLDC’s MT survey and Red Pine’s trenching underscore a data-driven approach to near-term drill targeting.

No games this weekend, half the team is heading back to their homes for a bit of family time and we’re here with the Latvian Billet, too far for him or us to go home, and for the first Thanksgiving in a long time we wont be spending it with our families.

Like the market tickers, life moves fast, take a bit of time this weekend to take it in.

Happy Thanksgiving all, enjoy the weekend.

- Lee