Greetings Survivor Contrarian,

This is The Next Big Rush, your daily drop of mining/energy investing news. Where we come together and thank the Lordy Lord we don't know bank stocks.

Here are the $ points:

💴 China vs Australia REE Battle

💴 Newfound Gold Puts Other Hits To Shame

💴 Gold is Up!

🔥 China vs Australia REE Battle

The Australian government has prevented China's Yuxiao Fund, the largest shareholder of heavy rare earths producer Northern Minerals Ltd (ASX: NTU), from increasing its investment due to “national interest”. Yuxiao Fund had sought approval to raise ownership from 9.92% to 19.9% through the Foreign Investment Review Board, but Treasurer Jim Chalmers signed a prevention order on Feb. 15.

This is not the first time that Australia has blocked a major Chinese participation in Northern Minerals, as a previous transaction with Baogang was stopped by the government in April 2020.

China's criticism of Australia for blocking Chinese investment in rare earths seems rich, given that China prohibits foreign direct investment in rare earths and processing through its "Negative List".

The current policy is: all for me, none for thee.

Cute.

🤙🏼Newfound Gold Puts Gold Hits To Shame

We hope you’re sitting down for this ‘cause Newfound Gold has just published a jackpot of a gold assay at the new Iceberg discovery, a high-grade zone located 300m northeast of Keats Main, close to surface.

Highlight:

49.7 g/t Au Over 29.9m

And

14.6 g/t Au over 3.80m

The devil is in the details:

“1the host structures are interpreted to be steeply dipping and true widths are generally estimated to be 60% to 95% of reported intervals.2 A structurally complex interval containing possible oblique veining where true widths could be as low as 30%; further drilling at varying orientations is required to accurately apply a true width to this interval.”

Still.

The Company is currently undertaking a 500,000m drill program at Queensway and approximately 53,000m of core is currently pending assay results.

🛫 Gold Flying During Bank Implosion

Gold is UP, let’s party for the next 5 minutes.

With the SVB fiasco and the shutting down of another (ahem crypto-friendly bank) called Signature Bank in New York, shareholder fear did not leave the regional banking sector. First republic Bank (NYSE: FRC) closed down 61% and Western Alliance (NYSE: WAL), 47%. This makes our penny dreadful juniors look like gold.

Speaking of gold, as the good ol’ store of value that it represents, it saw a lift of over 2% intraday at $1914.19. Silver also shone, with a high of 21.83, or over 6% lift.

We are mere speculators and don’t propose you consider us in the same category as mighty financial pages journalists, but we conclude the run on banks is the only explanation for this quick rise - which started Friday end of day as the story started to unravel.

The feds have come out and said depositors will be made whole in an attempt to avoid a full on apocalyptic America-wide bank run, and it just might work. HSBC has agreed to buy the British Operations (SVB UK) for a whopping 1 gbp.

Meme of The Day

Happy speculating!

The Editor

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.