Beware the ides of March, or maybe January, because Trump, having lost interest in Greenland perhaps, has sent shockwaves through the rare earth investing landscape, with doubts now cast over whether the U.S. gov’t will provide neodymium price supports at the government level to players like MP Materials.
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While reports the US gov’t may have ‘changed its mind’ on providing a price floor for REEs are unconfirmed – the value prop that saw REE stocks juice hard in CY25 during the Albo-Trump meeting – it’s been enough to turn many risk-off, a Church which probably isn’t too hard to find converts for at the moment.
Iluka Resources (ASX:ILU) sank on Thursday, down some -14.7% heading into the second half of arvo trades; while Australia’s only real REE producer, Lynas Rare Earths (ASX:LYC), sank -10% in the same timeframe.
(Still, the latter’s 1Y returns are up +130%, which could show that today’s panic selling doesn’t point to a wider consensus view in the zeitgeist.)
At any rate, slumps in rare earths helped to push the ASX materials sector further downward on a bad day for the market, as at around 2pm AEDT, the materials sector and IT were jostling for biggest faller status.
But it’s not just actual REE stocks suffering either; instead, nearly every ASX-listed stock linked to Trump’s machinations is also taking a hit.
Dateline Resources (ASX:DTR) was down nearly -15%, and stocks in the U.S.-based defence metals space, like American Tungsten and Antimony (ASX:AT4), were also taking a blow. Resolution Minerals (ASX:RML) was down nearly -10%; and even Larvotto (ASX:LRV), with a defence metals mine-to-be far away in Australia, was down nearly -2.5% in this latest rattling of the tree.
But is it all just distraction? Well, who knows? In the meantime, Trump is dealing with backlash over his poorly-trained deportation militia going a little bit feral and killing American citizens. The USD’s slumping, too, and gold keeps rising – faith in the sturdiness of America’s future economic performance is clearly cracking, and that could be why the circus keeps getting louder.
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