Keith Bachman Analyst Performance

The largest energy source on Earth contains 50,000 times every oil and gas reserve on the planet combined - and much of it sits beneath the desert near the Grand Canyon. A drilling crew just hit the DOE's 2035 targets twelve years early, with costs down 50% in 18 months. Google signed on, Gates invested, and the Pentagon made it a priority. One company has been quietly building this infrastructure for sixty years.

The U.S. Treasury still values its gold reserves at 42.22 dollars an ounce, a price set in 1973. Gold trades near 4,500 dollars today, a 113-to-1 gap between book value and market reality. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said he wants to monetize the asset side of the balance sheet. A revaluation could add more than 1 trillion dollars to the government's books overnight. Certain gold miners still trade as if gold were under 2,000 dollars, even as prices near record highs.

Newmont spent 15 billion dollars acquiring Newcrest in 2023, the largest deal in gold mining history. Yet production stayed at 5.9 million ounces, unchanged from 2020. Newmont, Barrick and Agnico all face the same reserve shortage, pushing majors toward acquiring smaller producing miners. Recent deals show the pattern: Rupert Resources jumped 67 percent and G2 Goldfields jumped 79 percent the day their buyouts were announced. Analyst Garrett Goggin has identified four junior miners he believes are next on the shopping list.