The 2025–26 base‑metals melt‑up just had its first real gut‑check. I think it’s a reset, not a top.”

“Other Basic Materials & Mining” is a category maintained by Yahoo Finance, currently sitting at 73 issues.

Within that basket you’ve got names like MP Materials, USA Rare Earth, Nexa Resources, United States Antimony, Critical Metals Corp, US GoldMining, Blue Moon Resources, Sigma Lithium and a long tail of other specialty and base‑metals names, along with, AngloAmerican, Rio Tinto, Glencore and Vale..

This has been one of the best trades of this cycle.

Over the last five years the group is up roughly +124% versus about +64% for the S&P 500, with most of that outperformance jammed into the 2025–26 metals bull.

So where does that leave us now?

We’ve just seen the first proper gut‑check of this move. A January–February blow‑off followed by a sharp reversal this month. It shook out billions of dollars and forced everyone to ask the right question:

Is this the end of the trade, or the kind of reset you get in the early innings of a structural bull?

In my view, the underlying drivers haven’t gone anywhere.

The last 18 months have been defined by explosive demand for data centres, grid capacity, electrification and war‑driven rearmament (tungsten in missiles cannot be recycled!)

That’s a brutal cocktail for metals demand in a system that spent the last decade chronically underinvesting in new supply.

On top of that, you still have the currency‑debasement bid under real assets.

What has changed is positioning and sentiment.

The trade got crowded into the Q1 melt‑up. Even Andy Home, Senior metals columnist at Reuters, called base metals “bullish but not breathless” back in early February.

A polite way of saying expectations were getting a little ahead of themselves.

Most 2026 price targets I’m seeing are basically flat to 2025, maybe modestly higher.

That leaves plenty of room for a sentiment cooling even if the fundamental story stays intact.

Near term, I do think upside is capped while the market digests the run we’ve just had.

Unless the core thesis actually breaks (electrification and AI metals demand, structural supply tightness after a decade of underinvestment, and ongoing currency debasement), and it won't, I don’t see this as a major top.

It's more of a nasty shakeout you want to see in a young bull.

I’m watching for:

• A deeper pullback toward the five‑year trend line on the industry chart.

• Further capitulation in the high‑beta juniors while copper, nickel and aluminum hold structurally higher trading ranges than the last cycle.

Back in December I said 2026 would be a much tougher environment than the gift that Summer/Fall 2025 handed us.

I still think that’s right. Near‑term upside is likely constrained after the blow‑off, but nothing about this setup says “secular top” to me yet.

I am staying focused on finding junior explorers and developers with exceptional assets and management teams, which have not participated in the melt-up and ensuing crash.

There are many situations that are undervalued to the extreme, front and centre on my research radar. I'll have more to say about these companies in the coming days and week.

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