A subtle but powerful market shift

Rule also argued that many investors are still missing the most important development in uranium — a quiet structural shift away from spot pricing toward long-term contracting.

While uranium equities continue to trade off a thinly traded spot market — which accounts for roughly a quarter of annual transaction volume in a good year — utilities are increasingly locking in multi-year supply agreements.

“Unlike almost any other commodity, uranium producers can pre-sell material under contracts that specify price and terms,” Rule said. “That changes everything.” Those contracts, he explained, can serve as collateral, lowering financing risk and enabling projects that would have been unbankable five years ago.

The impact is already visible. Utilities have been steadily re-entering the term market since 2022, with Cameco reporting an expanding contract book and higher realized prices year over year.

Meanwhile, physical uranium investment vehicles, particularly the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust (TSX:U.U,OTCQX:SRUUF), have removed tens of millions of pounds from circulation, tightening availability even further.

That tightening is occurring alongside geopolitical fragmentation.

Sanctions and self-imposed trade barriers have effectively split the uranium market, with Russian and some Central Asian material flowing east, while western utilities scramble to secure non-Russian supply.

As Bey put it, “That uranium isn’t coming back west.”

Supply, risk and the Athabasca advantage

The question, then, is where new uranium supply will come from. Canada’s Athabasca Basin, home to the world’s highest-grade uranium deposits, remains central to that answer.

Several advanced projects, including Denison Mines’ (TSX:DML,NYSEAMERICAN:DNN) Wheeler River operation and NexGen Energy’s (TSX:NXE,NYSE:NXE) Rook I asset, are both approaching key permitting milestones, potentially clearing the way for construction later this decade.

After decades without a new uranium mine approval in Canada, momentum appears to be shifting.

Bey said regulators are becoming more familiar with uranium-specific permitting, while First Nations partners are increasingly vocal in their support for project development.

Exploration also remains critical, though not without challenges. Bey noted a shrinking pipeline of trained uranium geologists, with graduating class sizes sharply lower than a decade ago. “Teams matter more than ever,” he said. “A good discovery today will get bought — and at a multiple that will surprise people.”

Rule was blunter. Of roughly 125 uranium juniors globally, he expects only 10 to 15 to generate meaningful returns.

“The rest go to their intrinsic value, which is zero,” he said.

Success, he added, comes down to people, geology and jurisdiction — in that order.

Jurisdictional risk itself sparked debate. Rule argued that political risk is often misunderstood, noting that supply disruptions in places like Niger tend to reroute material rather than remove it from the global market.

Tiggre, while broadly agreeing, said investors are justified in demanding a discount for higher-risk regions. “If I need a military escort, that’s not a positive check mark,” he said.

Volatility is the price of admission

Despite their bullish long-term outlooks, all three panelists emphasized that volatility is unavoidable.

Narrative-driven selloffs, whether tied to artificial intelligence (AI) hype, data center demand or broader risk-off sentiment, can whipsaw uranium equities even when fundamentals remain intact.

“That’s when opportunity shows up,” Tiggre said, pointing to sharp pullbacks in 2024 that preceded new highs later in the year. “Fundamentals and narratives aren’t the same thing.”

Rule offered a starker reminder. “If you aren’t willing to accept a small probability of catastrophic loss, don’t be here,” he said, referencing the ever-present tail risk of a major nuclear accident.

For investors willing to accept that risk, the panel’s message was clear: uranium’s bull run appears to be maturing, but is far from over. The easy money may be gone — but, as Rule put it, “the sure money may still lie ahead.”

AI, energy security and the case for uranium’s next leg higher

If the first half of the uranium bull market was driven by supply discipline and long-overdue utilities contracting, the next phase may be shaped by something far larger: electricity itself.

That was the gist of comments from Uranium Energy (NYSEAMERICAN:UEC) CEO Amir Adnani at VRIC.

He framed nuclear power, and by extension uranium, as a central pillar of the emerging AI economy, not merely a decarbonization tool. What stands out, Adnani argued, is not just the scale of demand that’s coming into view, but also the political and corporate alignment forming around it.

At this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, global leaders, including US President Donald Trump, publicly identified grid fragility and electricity shortages as national security risks in the AI era.

For Adnani, the shift in tone was telling. “When leaders stop talking only about inflation and start talking about power and electricity, that’s a sign of the times we’re in,” he said.

Crucially, nuclear energy has become one of the few areas of bipartisan consensus in the US.

While Democrats often emphasize decarbonization, Republicans increasingly frame nuclear as a strategic asset tied to energy independence and security. “This isn’t a four-year story,” Adnani emphasized to the audience. “We’re talking about multi-decade growth underpinned by bipartisan political support.”

The urgency, however, collides with reality.

AI-driven electricity demand is accelerating far faster than new generation can be built. Adnani cited a Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) estimate calling for roughly 150 gigawatts of additional power capacity globally over the next three years from data centers alone — equivalent to powering more than 150 cities the size of Philadelphia.

“One gigawatt is a city of 2 million people,” he said. “And we’re talking about adding more than 100 of those.”

That buildout could require as much as US$3 trillion in investment. Governments, Adnani noted, cannot shoulder that burden alone. Instead, balance sheets from tech giants such as Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) are increasingly being deployed to secure reliable, long-term power — a dynamic that favors baseload generation over intermittent sources.

“This isn’t just political signaling,” he said. “This is the private sector committing real capital, as fast as possible, to infrastructure that works 24/7.”

For uranium, the implications are direct. Global pledges now call for nuclear capacity to triple by 2050, while the US has set its sights on quadrupling domestic capacity. That ambition implies a parallel expansion in uranium supply, something the market is currently ill-equipped to deliver.

At the same time, the supply picture is already strained.

The US consumes roughly 50 million pounds of uranium annually, but produces less than 4 million pounds, leaving it more than 90 percent dependent on imports, much of them from geopolitically sensitive regions.

In Adnani’s view, reshoring critical mineral supply chains — uranium included — has become a strategic imperative.

“This bifurcated world is a total game changer,” he said. “The US wants control over its supply chains, and uranium is now squarely in that category.”

Room for growth intact

Adnani also pushed back against the idea that uranium prices have already peaked.

The spot price spiked above US$100 in late January and has since stabilized near US$96, a level that remains well below the 2007 high of US$140, even as the market is structurally tighter than it was nearly two decades ago.

Adjusted against gold’s performance since that peak, Adnani argued, uranium remains historically cheap.

“On a gold equivalent basis, uranium would be closer to US$1,000,” he said. “That’s the headroom.”

Positioning for that upside, he explained, requires scale, patience and balance sheet strength, qualities Uranium Energy has spent two decades assembling.

The company built its asset base during the downturn, acquiring more than US$1 billion in projects when uranium traded near US$20. Today, it operates as the largest US-focused uranium producer, with ambitions to become vertically integrated from mining through conversion — a capability that does not currently exist domestically.

Uranium Energy’s unhedged strategy underscores its conviction. “We don’t put ceilings on our upside,” Adnani said. “We want maximum exposure to what we believe will be an unprecedented bull market.”

Overall his message echoed that of others at VRIC: commodities — and energy in particular — are entering a new cycle.

“This is another industrial revolution,” he said. “And it’s an energy-hungry one. We’re still in the early innings.”

Gold price

After hitting a record high of close to US$5,600 per ounce, gold closed out January by embarking on one of the biggest price slides it’s seen in decades. By early morning trading on Monday (February 2), the yellow metal had dropped as low as US$4,400 for a significant loss of more than 21 percent.

However, gold regained much of that lost ground by Tuesday’s (February 3) close, trading back above US$4,935. By Wednesday (February 4) morning, gold was once again back above the key psychological US$5,000 mark, although it couldn’t maintain that level for long and slipped back down into the US$4,900 range.

Gold price chart, January 28, 2025, to February 4, 2026.

The primary drivers for gold this past week are:

Silver price

The silver price has tracked gold on these macro trends. The white metal fell from the all-time high of more than US$120 per ounce that it reached on January 29 to a low of about US$71 on Monday.

Silver price chart, January 28, 2025, to February 4, 2026.

Although silver lost 35 percent from its peak in such a short time, the precious metal has rebounded to an intraday high of US$92.32 as its fundamentals remain strong.

Platinum price

Platinum tracked its precious metal sisters down from a January 29 high of US$2,816 per ounce to as low as US$1,882. By Tuesday, the metal was back above US$2,200 and has traded mostly around that price mark for Wednesday.

Platinum price chart, January 28, 2025, to February 4, 2026.

Platinum is one of the top-performing metals over the past year, reaching 12 year highs in recent weeks. Demand is being driven by the metal’s essential role in the emerging hydrogen economy. Its also still seeing robust demand from the auto sector despite the emergence of electric vehicles and uneasy consumer confidence in the economy.

On the supply side, global platinum reserves remain critically low, especially as the world’s biggest producer, South Africa, continues to be plagued by power shortages and operational disruptions.

Palladium price

Palladium has been the black sheep of the precious metals family for the past few years, remaining well below its March 2022 all-time record of US$3,440.76 per ounce.

On January 29, palladium got in on the party and rallied to an intraday high of US$2,172.50.

Then on Monday it came along for the slide, falling as low as US$1,529. After a slight rebound on Tuesday, the precious metal has traded around US$1,700 to US$1,800.

Palladium price chart, January 28, 2025, to February 4, 2026.

The palladium price is being held down by a slump in demand for electric vehicles and a looming oversupply situation. Analysts at Heraeus and Metals Focus predict the palladium market may move into a surplus in 2026 as secondary supply from recycling increases by 10 percent.

1. ‘No realer thing than critical minerals’ — Vance

‘And as much as we talk about the modern economy, the digital economy, the high-tech economy, the President said something that was very, very important, and I think should inform a lot of how we think about future growth, which is that as much as data centers and technology and all of these incredible things that we’re all working on matter, fundamentally you still have an economy that runs on real things. And there is no realer thing than oil — and I would add to that there’s no realer thing than critical minerals.’

2. ‘We will establish reference prices for critical minerals’ — Vance

‘So, this morning, the Trump Administration is proposing a concrete mechanism to return the global critical minerals market to a healthier, more competitive state — a preferential trade zone for critical minerals, protected from external disruptions through enforceable price floors. We will establish reference prices for critical minerals at each stage of production, pricing that reflects real-world, fair-market value.

‘And for members of the preferential zone, these reference prices will operate as a floor, maintained through adjustable tariffs to uphold pricing integrity. We want to eliminate that problem of people flooding into our markets with cheap critical minerals to undercut our domestic manufacturers because we know, of course, that as soon as they’ve undercut our domestic makers, they — the domestic markers — they’d leave the market and the people who undercut them then jack up the price to a completely unfair level. We’re going to fix that problem.’

3. ‘We … outsourced our economic security’ — Rubio

‘The United States used to produce its own critical minerals and derivative products like rare earth magnets. Back in 1949, miners in Mountain Pass, California discovered one of the world’s richest mineral deposits. By 1952, the United States, we were mining rare earths there, and that discovery sparked a revolution.

‘American scientists and engineers, alongside innovators from many of the countries that are here today, rushed to discover new applications for these minerals and, with these new technologies, ushered in the jet age, we ushered in the space age, we ushered in the computer age.

‘And then we became blinded, blinded by the potential of the technologies those metals enabled, but we neglected their importance. Mining is less glamorous than building computers. It’s less glamorous than building cars or airplanes. But building computers and cars and airplanes is less glamorous than designing them.

‘As we embraced what was new and glamorous, we outsourced what seemed old and unfashionable. We allowed, for example, Mountain Pass — and with it, most of America’s critical mineral industry — to wither and to die so that we could focus on manufacturing. Then we outsourced the manufacturing.

‘And I know this is a story I’m telling, but it’s a story many of the advanced economies represented here today understand well. We outsourced the manufacturing so we could focus on designing these goods. And then one day we woke up and we realized we had outsourced our economic security and our very future. We were at the mercy of whoever controlled supply chains for these minerals. So my hope is that we are gathered here today as the first but important step to rectifying this mistake, to bring together our collective talent for innovation, when our advantage over rivals — where our advantage over rivals has only grown, and to apply it to bringing back manufacturing and reopening mines here in the United States, but also in all the partner nations represented here today.’

4. ‘Diversity … is what makes us resilient’ — Horii

‘Japan strongly believes that FORGE will become an important venue and a vehicle for us to focus on supply chain diversification and ensure policy coordination. Japan stands ready to actively contribute to discussions to further deepen collaboration with partners and to ensure the effective implementation of this initiative.

‘So how should we move forward from here? On the supply side, diversification is essential. Diversity as opposed to concentration is what makes us resilient. This has to be one of the — our major guiding principles.’

5. ‘Four key initiatives’ — Copley

‘So, four key initiatives — we’re investing, we’re stockpiling, we’re going to protect our mining companies, and we’re fixing our mining ecosystem — because this industry is so important to our national development, as I know it is to your countries as well. But most importantly, under President Trump’s leadership, we are no longer standing around admiring the problem. We’re not spending our time writing 200-page book reports about how important critical minerals are. We have a plan, and we’re focused on project execution — getting deals done, getting companies their permits, stockpiling minerals, and hopefully moving forward with all of you, our international partners, to protect our mining companies and to rebuild global mining in a fair and balanced way.’