Wealthion Macro Bites-The U.S. Critical Minerals Offensive

Titan Mining (Canada) and REalloys (U.S.) announced Thursday their selection by the U.S. Army to ​develop small critical-minerals processing facilities for U.S. military bases. Titan Mining said its Empire State Mines subsidiary received enhanced-use leases at two ​U.S. sites to develop graphite processing capacity. REalloys said it entered exclusive negotiations for a lease to develop heavy rare earth processing facilities at the Tooele Army Depot in Utah. Under the proposed leases (of up to 50 years) the ​Titan subsidiary would finance, design, build, operate and eventually decommission the facilities, while ‌the ⁠U.S. Army would retain ownership of the land.

Indonesian roller coaster: Indonesia’s Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry is informing miners that mid-year revisions to nickel mining quotas will increase ’26 permitted output to 360Mt (from previously announced 260Mt). If adopted, the new guidelines would mark a sharp reversal from tightening nickel quotas in early ’26 (triggering a steep rise in LME nickel prices). The plan to relax quotas is subject to change and remains at the discretion of Energy Minister Bahlil Lahadalia. Stay tuned…

AI inflation watch: Apple raised iPad and MacBook prices, saying it could no longer shield customers from soaring memory and chip costs driven by the AI buildout. The price of its lowest-priced laptop increases from $599 to $699. CEO Tim Cook commented, “We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly…We have shielded our customers from these increases so far, but we have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products.”

Liquidity watch: New York Times reports OpenAI is considering postponing its IPO until next year. CEO Sam Altman wants a $1T valuation (up from last private valuation of $730B). Investment bankers say OpenAI would have to accept a lower valuation to go public this year or wait until ’27 to achieve $1T valuation. South Korea’s Kospi Index is experiencing extreme volatility (-10% Tues., +3.2% Wed., +5.4% Thurs. & -5.8% Fri.), suggesting tech confidence is starting to falter.

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