Commodity Compass - 8/14 - Gold Finds its Rhythem in Markets Once Again

The market is still working off the summer doldrums — thin, low-conviction trading — and this week's data did little to break the spell. The big commodity story this week was in Washington. On August 7th, the President convened a roundtable of mining executives at the State Department — Rio Tinto, BHP, Freeport, MP Materials among them — and rolled out more than two billion dollars in new critical-mineral deals alongside it. The framing was blunt — cut the dependence on China, and replenish the defense stockpiles drawn down during the Iran conflict. It's the clearest signal yet of just how much public capital is about to hit this space.