Justin Huhn: My Uranium Strategy — Cashed Up, Waiting to Deploy

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-26

[00:00:06]I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and here today with me is Justin Hune, founder and publisher at Uranium Insider. Thank you so much for being here. Great to have you back.

[00:00:17]>> It's a pleasure. Thanks so much.

[00:00:19]>> Really good to be catching up with you.

[00:00:22]As we were talking about before we turned the camera on, it's been a little while. It's been almost a year since I had you on. My apologies for taking so long to have you back, but I wondered since it has been so long, can you can you catch me up on where we're at in the uranium cycle right now?

[00:00:39]>> Sure. Yeah, it it has been a while since we've spoken, so glad to get you up to speed. Um, it's it's been quite an eventful last 12 months or so. We obviously last year had u a lot of volatility in all markets in the first few months of the year leading into a bottom for many markets including uranium in April. We had a V-shaped recovery and then some with a nice solid run to end the year. Um right out of the gates in January we had a lot of money pouring into the spot physical uranium trust. They purchased over 6 million pounds of uranium already this year so far. We saw the spot price uh get backwardated to the term price briefly and go up above $100 a pound for a couple of days in late January. Settled back down into the mid80s here. And we're seeing continued activity in the long-term contracting market which is very very constructive. On the fundamental front, we've seen a lot of very positive developments. Large contracts between India and both Kazat and Prom and Camo. We've seen increased involvement on behalf of hyperscalers actually in the physical uh nuclear fuel market which I think is quite notable and we've also just seen uh just an enormous buildout of data centers and electricity demand and I think that uh there's a lot of solid takes around right now uh based on money that is that is poured into the AI and the tech sectors eventually will rotate into all things physical especially to the energy sectors. So that's what we're positioned for. And um right now we're seeing a pullback in the sector. We usually have, you know, a 30 plus% pullback at least once a year, if not twice. We're in one of those right now. And we see this as a very tradable market with a very solid fundamentals for the mid and long term.

[00:02:22]And anytime you have short-term pullbacks like this, historically speaking, they have been solid opportunities. So we're we're cashed up here. We're looking to deploy. Uh just kind of waiting it out. Okay, great summary of where we're at right now and a lot of directions for us to go in. I wanted to start with the price because you had a recent post on X that seems to sum up where we're at right now where we've got this active long-term contracting market, spot market, more quiet. So, I wonder if you can talk about that divergence there. I assume if the the contract market is active, that means we've got utilities being active and and buying. So, can you break down what we're seeing there? Sure. So, in Q4 of last year, we had over 70 million pounds officially added to the long-term contracting tally. And much of that volume was done in Q4. Some of it was done in Q3. That the reporting just lags. And that's just kind of how the industry is. There's no real hard andf fast rules as to who or when or exactly how the the details of contracts will be reported to the price reporters, but they basically believe that they get 80 to 85% of the volume reported. So that's UXC, right? So UXC reported over 70 million in Q4. Year to date, we've got uh officially over 20 million, but that does not include these very large contracts like I mentioned between India and Kamo, both Kamo and Kazatam and we estimate those to be somewhere in the ballpark of about 45 million between the two entities in India. So that puts us roughly about 65 maybe into 70 million pounds year to date, which is actually quite close to replacement rate contracting. It's not quite there, but it's pretty close. So it's the the activity that we saw in Q4 has carried over into the first couple of quarters of this year. Things might slow down a little bit in the summertime months. You know, typically we see a slowdown June, July, maybe into the first half of August, but I don't think they're going to go dead quiet. There's already there's probably a dozen RFPs and RFIs, requests for information and proposal in the physical market officially. There's multiple utilities um negotiating offmarket. There's many more utilities expected to come to market. We've got a nuclear fuel conference in about 2 weeks that I'll be attending as well and a lot of utilities will be there finalizing discussions. We expect some more volume in the term market to come to pass following that conference. But that is all to say that a lot of activity in the long-term market. The price is stable and rising in the term market. It's at 9150 blended between UXC and trade tech.

[00:04:55]And that's up from from you know the mid80s and low8s that it was stagnant for a very long period of time. Price was was within a couple of bucks of $80 a pound for for about 15 months in long-term market. And now we've moved up over $10 a pound from that stagnation point over the past 6 months or so. a lot of activity in term spot kind of quiet here. Not a lot of volume traded.

[00:05:17]Uh when volume does come in, it seems to be met off with with decent offers. So, we're not expecting a a big move up in the spot price like imminent. But the fundamental story and the solid demand that is actually manifesting in the long-term market is absolutely happening. And that's a much healthier market than the short-term, you know, financialbased speculation that can drive spot up and down violently. What we're wanting to see is what we're seeing as far as utilities finally coming to terms with the terms that the producers are wanting which is mostly market reference you know floors around the market price ceilings 150 160 and so the the forward market is pricing in much much higher uranium in the coming years >> that's exactly the direction I was going to go in which is do the companies that are signing the long-term contracts do they still have the upper hand in those negotiations which it sounds like it does and they will continue to do moving forward >> for sure. It's definitely a sellers market. I don't see that changing anytime soon. You know, and the the incumbent producers like Kamico, Arano, um Rosatam to some extent, uranium 1, uh Kazatam Prom, all of these entities, BHP, they're they're demanding much more of these market reference contracts. you have um some traders that are getting off takes from Usbekistan and some of the brownfield restarts that are offering up base escalated uh contracts or majority base escalated but that's a that's a minority of the volume so the bulk of it is on terms that really work for the producers and importantly the producers are are wanting to capture as much upside as possible and so floors around here with ceilings almost double where we're at here kind of shows you where the producers are expecting the price to go >> well and I know This is not as as recent as it could be at this point, but can we talk a little bit about those big deals with India? Is that something that you see happening more often moving forward?

[00:07:11]I know we've got such uptake of nuclear all around the world. So, how are you seeing that?

[00:07:17]>> Sure. Well, India historically has been very close to Russia in terms of getting energy resources from Russia, not just nuclear fuel. They have actual Russian VVER style reactors in India in addition to India's own um native heavy water reactor. Those are the two that are kind of in fleet mode and both are still being built in the country right now. So for India to engage in these large uranium contracts with both Kamako and Kazadrom, it's it's sort of uh a new element that's been introduced. This is not necessarily how the Indians have operated in the past and as far as we can tell these are volumes that are above what they are going to need for the operations of their existing fleet.

[00:07:59]So it looks to us like they are actually getting serious about building nuclear and historically speaking when when Indians come out and they say we're going to build xyz number of reactors and we're going to do it by this date the whole industry goes kind of yeah whatever we'll see it we'll see it if it happens but there's definitely evidence on the ground including these large contracts that makes it appear as if they're getting serious about actually doing this. So, um, that's a very positive sign and it's definitely a different way. Um, I mean, the Indians have done contracts before for uranium.

[00:08:32]It's not like they only get the the enriched material from Russia or the raw material because the heavy water doesn't need enrichment. Um, mostly from Russia, but for them to come out and sign these large contracts with both Kazam Camo, it it absolutely should be somewhat of a wakeup call for any Western utilities that are not yet covered. I want to talk a little bit more about the price as well because certainly we seem like we're in an environment where we're going to see higher prices. What does the path forward look like for you? Do you see it as a slow and steady climb at this point? And I also wonder, is there a specific trigger that pushes us into that next leg or is it more seeing more of the same that we have seen at this point?

[00:09:15]>> Sure, that's a really good question. Um I would argue that right now I expect it to continue kind of what's happening now which is a slow and steady climb. Um, usually the price spikes come based on some kind of disruption and over the past number of years with the exception of, you know, going back to 2017, 2018 when Camo shut down MacArthur River and put it on care and maintenance that was a big shock on the supply side and on the demand side because they had to buy in in the spa market and then you had COVID then of course the Russian war in Ukraine and the disruptions around that.

[00:09:48]So there's been plenty of these kind of idiosyncratic events, but most of the shocks that have caused the price to spike have been financial based. So the the you know the inception of the spat physical uranium trust taking over UPC and enacting an ATM that was a big catalyst for the sector and they've bought an enormous amount of uranium over the years. So that has been the financialization has been that shock. I think going forward that's going to have less of less of an impact. Not only because the price has responded, the price has tripled essentially since Spud came on the scene, the spot price. So the amount of pounds that can be purchased with the same amount of dollars has effectively been cut by by 2/3. So their impact in terms of total volume purchased is likely to diminish over time as the price rises. And I believe the shocks that will cause spikes in price will come from uh from actual supply not coming online that was expected. Big projects being delayed. Um any sort of any sort of disruptions to supply is going to have some reverberations in the market. And right now we're dealing with a small one that hasn't really caused reverberation with the bridge wash out in Saskatchewan Camo shutting down MacArthur River for you know a brief moment. I don't think that's really going to manifest into a big deal. But going out looking forward, looking at our supply and demand modeling, what is needed in order for the industry to even approach something resembling a balanced market even for a moment in time is these very large projects. So Dennison's Phoenix, NextGen's Arrow is really the big one.

[00:11:19]And the industry still believes that Arrow will be producing 29 million pounds a year starting in 2031. And um I I don't know a single analyst of the sector that believes that that's going to take place. So whether or not they build this thing on time, on budget, but decide to produce less, that's a shock in and of itself. But more than likely, the the outcome is going to be, you know, mining is hard. Building the largest uranium mine in in history is very hard. It's very deep. There's some unique elements to it. I'm not saying it's technically impossible, but I think for it to go perfectly smoothly and for them to uh simply decide to produce at the level in their feasibility study is highly highly unlikely. So any disruptions to that or other larger development projects are going to have uh some type of influence on the price in the market. And besides that, a slow and steady grind higher is is healthier for the industry. It's healthier for producers. And you know eventually we'll get to high enough prices for long enough that supply will respond. I just don't see how that's going to happen over the next let's say 5 to 7ear period.

[00:12:29]>> Right. Right. I think definitely we all know that mining is hard. It's it's rare for things to go completely smoothly.

[00:12:35]So, I think we've talked in the past about how not only are we kind of relying on these up and cominging projects to go smoothly, but also for Camo and Kazatamrom, their their pipelines aren't as full as they could be. So, that's an issue as well. Are they doing anything to mitigate that or or how are they approaching this time period right now?

[00:12:57]>> That's that's a really really good question. Um, and I would add to Kamicon because Adam Orano, which I would argue has just as bad, if if not a worse um, pipeline issue because Arano being stateowned and the French nuclear operators EDF also being stateowned.

[00:13:12]Earlier this year in February, we we heard that that France basically officially announced that um the bulk of their fleet, which is like 50 of the 57 reactors, I'm getting that number butchered, but almost all of their fleet that is of these two particular designs, they are kind of they're they're granting sort of a blanket 10-year approval. Each reactor will uh life extension approval. Each reactor will have to have, you know, individual um assessment about that life extension.

[00:13:40]But they're basically saying these two designs can safely operate to 50 years.

[00:13:44]And so that 10-year extension for Fran, the bulk of France's fleet, that alone, the demand from those 10 years, from those 50 reactors is more than what Arrow will produce in all of its years of of production. So just to put that in perspective, right? And the EDF is going to need a hell of a lot of uranium in order to feed into that 10-year extension of the most of their fleet. So EDF and Orano sort of work together.

[00:14:06]Terrano obviously has a JV with Kamico for both MacArthur River and Cigar Lake.

[00:14:11]Cigar Lake is done in about 10 years.

[00:14:14]MacArthur is done in about 15. Um they lost Somare in Nishair and they've been scouring the globe. They've got some decent stuff coming out of the ground in Usbekiststan. They're poking around here and there, but they've got a problem.

[00:14:26]Okay. So, Kamako Kazatrom, Kazat Prom um in Kazakhstan is essentially acknowledging that uh you know their best assets have been have been mined out already or or in the process of declining in production. And if they aren't now, they will be in the next few years to the next decade plus. There's a couple that are going to go for another 20 years, but most of them will hit decline rates if they haven't already within the next 5 6 7 years. And the country of Kazakhstan is basically saying that we're going to establish a reserve, not an above ground reserve of yellow cake in a can, but a reserve of resource in the ground. So they're going to um delineate a number of deposits resource estimate and say those are are cordoned off for the state and that is so that they can build their own nuclear reactors and they will have fuel for the electricity in the country coming out of the country. So the state is saying, "You guys are going to do this exploration. You're going to find more assets." Well, some of that we're going to carve out and we're going to keep for ourselves. That's not going to be for sale to the Chinese or anybody else for that matter. Um, so they need to do a lot of exploration, a lot of development in order to be able to produce at about 60% of the levels they're producing now, 10 years from now. And that's according to their own internal estimates, their own exploration history, what they know they already have in the ground, what they're able to develop. So they're basically telling the market we will not be able to produce at these levels forever. They are going to decline uh despite how much money and time and effort we put into um expanding our exploration efforts and development efforts. So Kazakhstan is a slowly declining story. Of course they will be able to develop more assets. They will still be the biggest producer in the world for a very very long time. But they're probably going to peak out in the next couple of years once budsoya is at full production. they get their own asset plan up and running and we see that peak lasting for a few years and then we get decline rates for a lot of their projects and that's just not going to change. Long-waited answer Kamo Kamako doesn't seem to be doing anything at all. They've got some tier 2 assets that they can bring on like Rabbit Lake.

[00:16:34]It's going to need a new tailings facility, but that could come back online. They have ISR projects in Nebraska and the United States and Wy and Wyoming. Few million pounds a year at best from both of those. They have been sort of dropping hints about Dawn Lake, which is an exploration project that is right next door to ISO Energy's hurricane, which is the highest grade deposit in in the Atabaska. And that looks like it's going well. Is Dawn Lake going to be what replaces Cigar Lake for feed for um the Mclean Lake Mill? I don't know. And no, they're not going to tell anybody, but that's kind of what everybody's speculating.

[00:17:12]All of that said, they seem like they've got their hands full with Westinghouse and the quote unquote nuclear renaissance and their focus doesn't really seem to be on uranium right now.

[00:17:19]And that's kind of interesting from an industry perspective.

[00:17:23]>> That is very interesting. I was going to ask, are they just perhaps biting their time to make an acquisition or or maybe they're just going in another direction?

[00:17:32]as he said >> as as far as what the company tells us or anybody for that matter from what we can hear they're they're not giving any sort of hints at all. They they every time they're asked about, you know, your paper is worth a record amount against NextGen's paper, for example, why don't you guys do an allp paper transaction, take them out, then you've got then you've got arrow, you've got the whole aabaska, you can control the narrative, blah blah blah. They're just kind of like, yeah, we don't really need to do that. We've got our tier 2 stuff. We're going to be fine. So, they sort of fade that question every time they're asked.

[00:18:04]And there's plenty of industry speculators that have been um essentially wondering if anybody will take out uh NextG and or the Aero project. And now that they're essentially permitted and the shovels are going to hit the ground in the next, you know, month or two, doesn't really look like there's a suitor that came along. So, it looks like they're going to be building this thing, at least from what we can tell and what the evidence is out there right now. So, Kamico kind of playing it cool. Not really sure exactly what they're going to do besides they've been putting money in with Arono into exploring into Dawn Lake. It looks like they're hitting some good stuff over there from what we can tell. So maybe that's their development story in the next few years. Not really sure.

[00:18:44]We'll see.

[00:18:45]>> Okay. Okay. We'll we'll wait and see how that develops. The other point that I think people are really thinking about right now in general, not just for uranium, is the Iran war. So there's a couple of directions I'm hoping we can go in. I want to ask first about sulfuric acid. So we know that there's supply chain issues there because of the war which uranium needs in the the process there. So is that is that a concern? Is that impacting the industry at all at this point?

[00:19:14]>> It doesn't seem to be at this point. Um to the extent that the sulfur market is a global market, it certainly could put pressure on price. So for example, the biggest user of sulfuric acid for uranium production of course is Kazatam.

[00:19:29]uh but they have their own internal sources out of Kazakhstan and the acid or the sulfur that they do buy comes from Russia typically and doesn't come through the street. So they probably will see price pressure. Uh I think that's a pretty reasonable expectation, but it doesn't look like they're going to see actual supply disruption because of this. Um most of the sulfur experts exports that are utilized for uranium production are going to Africa. So there's um the Husab mine um they're they're pretty much covered. They have their own acid production facility. Uh but the the Rossing plant will also use a little bit of acid. Um Langer Hinrich does not use sulfuric acid as a luxivant or uh so it's they're they're doing fine on that front. But Husab they do import it. They make their own acid from the sulfur imports but they have an unknown amount of inventory. Nobody really knows how long that could be disrupted before they have production problems. You know, I think that there were some estimates that maybe they have four to eight weeks of inventory of sulfur that they can turn into acid. Um, beyond that, it could it could turn into a situation, but we don't really, you know, even if it does disrupt Husab for a moment in time, it's not going to be a long-term thing most likely. With all of that said, certainly pricing pressure should should aid in the in the rising of uranium prices that the produc producers costs are are rising because of this.

[00:20:55]The other Iran war aspect that I wanted to cover is of course it's brought a lot of attention to energy. So we have oil prices very volatile right now. Energy security is really in focus. And I wonder for you, does that add yet another building block to the long-term uranium story or how are you looking at that right now?

[00:21:16]>> Sure. Yeah, I think it's it's definitely a tailwind. It it's more of a long-term tailwind. So, this kind of disruption is definitely highlighting how secure individual nations are with their sovereign energy policies and how reliant they are on imports. And this has made it ultra clear to every single nation um how secure they are. And nuclear, of course, especially if you can store years of of nuclear fuel on site, is ultimately secure more than any other energy source out there. And uh so this has put a fine point on that. I think that we've seen some response.

[00:21:51]Obviously, the United States is um is self-sufficient when it comes to oil and gas, but we have seen a lot of moves in the United States towards building new nuclear, and that's very positive. Uh, Japan is is trying to get things going a little bit faster over than they have over the past few years in terms of restarts and possible new builds. But like I mentioned, France giving 10-year life extensions essentially to to almost their entire fleet. Belgium that just shut down reactors last year is talking about buying the idled and the shuttered and the remaining couple of operating reactors that are being operated by the French, buying them from the French and having those uh Belgianowned reactors and then actually restarting a couple of the reactors that they shut down. So that's a that's a a total 180 for Belgium over the past couple of years and that's very very recent. Um but yeah, I think that this is certainly a tailwind. Will we see a response like the '7s oil crisis in terms of building nuclear? Will we saw, you know, hundreds of reactors be built over the the following 15 years? Not really sure.

[00:22:53]We've got 75 under construction right now. Will that accelerate in the coming years? I'd like to think so, but um it's it's certainly a a broader kind of non-specific and longer term tailwind um for for just general energy security.

[00:23:07]Absolutely.

[00:23:08]>> I think that makes a lot of sense. And so you mentioned all these countries that are looking to increase their nuclear capacity right now and at the beginning of the conversation you were mentioning some of the reasons that they're doing that for example AI and I think when we talked a year ago at this point it was a little bit hard to quantify exactly what was going to be coming in terms of AI energy demand. Are we are we closer to that? How how is that looking right now?

[00:23:36]Yeah, I would say over the past year there's been plenty of skepticism about the pace of the buildout of the data centers and the capacity of electricity that these data centers will be demanding. And I think at this point there's um not much evidence to suggest that that's going to slow down. So the buildout has absolutely ramped essentially to the levels that were expected a year ago. Um it's growing so incredibly fast and energy is a limiting factor. It's a limiting factor. It's not chips. um it's not physical space to build the data centers, it's energy is the limiting factor to how quickly and how much capacity can be built right now. And so it's put a huge demand on gas turbines. It's put a huge demand on on building solar panels and storage.

[00:24:17]And it's put a huge demand on the existing reactors. So all of the existing reactors, especially in the United States and other countries that are building a lot of data centers, but the US is the big one. The existing reactors are all getting life extended.

[00:24:28]They are all going to operate to 80 years. Um, you know, maybe one exception would be Diablo Canyon, but that would only be for, you know, political reasons, so they might shut that down.

[00:24:37]Um, I still think that's going to get life extended going out to that 50 60 year mark. Everything else is going to 80. And and we're seeing those life extensions being granted in record time by the NRC. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is taking public victory laps about how fast they're um approving uh life extensions, how how fast they're accepting new uh applications for new designs. And so there this is the reform of the NRC is has been phenomenal.

[00:25:05]So that demand is is ma mainly a d-risking factor for the existing fleet more than anything but it is equaling actual uh accelerated need for building these reactors. And so one one important element of this that I think is worth pondering and considering is that we're now hearing multiple pieces of evidence that hyperscalers are are getting directly involved in the fuel cycle. So this is not necessarily working with a nuclear utility or working with the government for that matter but they are on their own valition um contacting enrichers contacting um entities such as nextgen interested in project finance potentially in exchange for uranium production offtake and this is absolutely huge for multiple reasons.

[00:25:58]One obviously is that the nuclear utilities which are the enduser market for uranium that comes out of the ground now could potentially have the deepest pocketed competitor possible for actual uranium coming out of the ground. And for even some of the uranium let's say for example coming out of arrow to be consumed by a not to be named hyperscaler should be concern concerning to utilities that they might have this competition.

[00:26:28]The second reason I think this is really important is these hyperscalers would not be going out and starting to seek sources of nuclear fuel if they weren't actually serious about owning and or potentially operating actual nuclear reactors.

[00:26:45]Because if you're just making a deal with a utility that is either already operating a reactor like Microsoft and Constellation for example, you're not out there in the fuel market. you're just making a power purchase agreement and an offtake of power for the next 10 or 20 years and you're going to pay a price for that. They're going to deal with the fuel and the operations. You're just going to take the juice and run the data center. Why would a hyperscaler be out and calling up centress and saying, you know, what is enrichment availability and and enriched uranium looking like going out in the next 10 or 20 years? They wouldn't be calling up nextg saying, "Hey, um, maybe we can fork up a billion dollars of project finance and get an offtake from this thing." that would only be happening if they are going to have a vested interest in the partial ownership and or partial operation of an actual reactor or multiple reactors to be operating data centers. So to me, the fact that they're out there in the physical market is evidence that they are serious. And so and this is really the biggest I mentioned before the price spike scenarios are mainly be caused likely by supply disruptions and I still believe that. But on the demand side, I think there's a potential for SMRs especially to absolutely snowball once we have first of a kind and then second of a kind and there's um public publicly known budgeting and cost and time frames around the building of these things.

[00:28:06]Who knows how much demand could roll out and very very quickly relatively speaking for for SMR demand especially if the hyperscalers are going to be writing the checks and making sure that this stuff is happening on schedules that they absolutely need to operate these data centers. So an extremely extremely exciting time >> that that is very interesting. And so for these hyperscalers, if they're taking matters essentially into their own hands, do they do they have the expertise to be doing this or is it more a matter of well they have the money so they can figure it out as they go?

[00:28:41]>> Um they h they definitely have been engaging with folks in the industry. So that is to say that some of the big tech companies actually have people on their payroll that understand nuclear energy and are going to be um you know acting on their behalf to make sure that they have everything covered on that on that on that front. Um so yeah and and you know the biggest example to think about this would be Amazon and Amazon you know initially engaging with FedEx and UPS and whatever might be them not being able to meet their their needs in terms of either pricing or volume. So they just created their own you know their own shipping fleet, their own vans, their own trucks, their own airplanes and they became their own shipper. Um Amazon again as another example already has a project offtake deal with a copper producer in Arizona uh for for actual raw copper um for their data centers. So this is not something that's far-fetched. This is not a pie in the sky. I think it is already happening.

[00:29:38]It's just about to happen in uranium and that's it's such a small market. It's so easily disrupted. That's what kind of makes it so exciting.

[00:29:46]it it really sounds possible. So, we'll keep an eye out to see how that develops. And I think it's really interesting. So, there's there's all of these positive developments that are stacking up as usual for uranium, but you mentioned we're in a down period right now. Maybe this is an opportunity for investors to get exposure or build their exposure. So, I wonder for you, where are you focusing in terms of companies right now? What types of companies are you looking at? Sure. So, we generally focus on on companies that will eventually be producing companies and will eventually be real cash flowing companies. And that's as far as um you know, our more fundamental based focusless portfolio. As far as our dynamic model portfolio, which is a trading portfolio, this is something we established last February. It's up about 85% since last last February. This is a much more dynamic portfolio where we we trade in and out. This is a very tradable market and um over the years we've had amazing success with trading when it comes to understanding the the robust support on the fundamental side for the physical market for the mid and the long term.

[00:30:58]And when you have near-term short-term pullbacks, you kind of know what to do.

[00:31:02]And it can be difficult to put money to work when the sector has pulled back, when the volatility is high, when sentiment is very very poor. That's the time when you actually want to be buying. And it can be difficult to do that if you don't have a strong foundation and a and a strong outlook for what's coming in front of us. So, you have to understand the physical market more than anything uh in order to have that conviction in my personal opinion. So, every single time that I've seen this and and this is what we do is we track we track sentiment, we track uh the charts, especially the the daily RSI and then we track the physical market and those are the biggest pieces of input that we have and where those align will dictate our trades. So, when sentiment is very high, when the physical market looks like it's peeking out or is not about to continue to run higher and the RSI is high, that's typically a time to take some off the table and vice versa. So right now sentiment's pretty bad. It's not despondent like last March and April. It it could get worse. So it's but it's pretty bad. RSI is, you know, mid to high30s is bad, but it's not terribly oversold. And the spot price is kind of stagnant here. So we actually have a pretty good amount of cash in addition to a large positioning in physical. And so that's where we want to be. And that dynamic model portfolio has aided our membership in being able to profit from that volatility. So, that's something that we implemented. We're actually very proud of those results. Um, but looking at the volatile market, looking at this pullback, 100% the pullback that's happening now, I don't know how deep it's going to go, for how much longer it's going to last, but we still have a decent amount of cash. So, if that tells you anything, but this is going to be a buyable dip and we will be buying it.

[00:32:46]And going forward, we've got, you know, usually a slower summer period, but we have another fuel conference in 10 days.

[00:32:52]Then we've got the summertime, then we got the W&A and the typically stronger season. But this year, we are seeing much more contracting happening, at least activity, in terms of the number of utilities that are engaging in the contracting market, much much more than we saw in the first half of last year. I just want to stick with the trading idea for a moment longer because I see among uranium investors frustration when we do have these pullbacks because I think a lot of people come in and they want to hold for the long term which is of course always looking very positive. So for you that's something did you say you implemented it last year this this trading and was that just born out of seeing the the cyclicality from year to year?

[00:33:32]>> For sure. Yeah. And my partner and I you know we've we've been watching this market for a very very long time. It's it's almost 10 years at this point. So, it's been very recognizable the signals to be able to trade uh from this. So, this came out of um requests from our membership and us wanting to kind of give more to the membership and and also based around how we personally act with our own money in our own personal portfolios, which is, you know, um obviously I'm going to speak for myself.

[00:34:00]I do have core positions that are very, very long-term holds. I've been holding for many many years but I also have a smaller position a smaller portfolio where I I do a lot more trading and those signals I follow personally make sense for us to follow those professionally as well and to look at these important physical market RSI sentiment and sometimes there's other elements that come in but I have a really unique positioning actually to gauge sentiment because of because of uh the Twitter profile because of the interviews that I do I can look at the comments in YouTube I can gauge the emails coming from our membership are coming in in general and that gives me a really good idea. So for example, right now if I post something on X that talks about the number of reactors that China is building and demand that's going to come from there just as an example and the first comment is but the stocks are down today. Like that's that's the classic it's a classic well if it's so good why is energy fuels down 2%. It's like come on you you those two things are not necessarily correlated on a day-to-day basis. But when the fundamentals keep stacking up in the background, the long-term contracting market is is has a lot of activity, the price is stable, yet the equities come down. That's your opportunity, and you have to have some cash to take advantage of that opportunity. That's why we have this trading portfolio so that we have cash going into moments like this in order to be able to to benefit from it.

[00:35:18]>> Makes a lot of sense to me. And we can we can gauge the comments on this interview. We'll see we'll see how people are feeling once we post it. I think we are getting to the end here.

[00:35:28]We've covered a lot of ground, but before I let you go, any final thoughts, things that we miss, things that investors might not be thinking about right now that you would leave us with?

[00:35:37]>> Sure. Yeah, I would say that um I mean just going back to what we were discussing a moment ago to quote our mutual friend Lobo, everybody wants to buy low and sell high, but you have to buy low. You know, you can't ignore the buying low part. And so this and maybe what we'll have for a little bit longer is the buying low part in my opinion.

[00:35:57]So, not investing advice, but it's what I will be doing. Um, as far as any parting thoughts, I honestly think, you know, looking at the supply situation, and I think that something is really unique about this setup right now compared to any previous period over the entire history of the nuclear industry. and that is that the uranium that will become nuclear fuel in the next decade plus is going to have to come out of the ground because the secondary supplies and the inventories are so low and that has never really happened in the past. There's always been a a very large and deep buffer. In fact, if you go back following the initial growth of nuclear industry in the 60s into the 70s into the early part of 80s, there was just an absolutely enormous supply response following the big price spike that happened in the 1970s. So a huge huge huge amount of uranium was produced not only for the nuclear fleet but for the weapons program between the United States and Russia and an insane amount of uranium was was produced and a lot of that was enriched into high-enriched uranium used in warheads or stockpiles HU.

[00:37:10]So when the reactor buildout slowed following 3M island and fuk and uh and Chernobyl and the uh cold war ended and you had the down blending of nuclear warhead material from Russia feeding 20 million pounds a year for 20 years into the United States that in addition to the stockpiles that were created from the just the buildout of the plants and the buildout supply in the 70s and 80s was a wash in uranium for decades.

[00:37:41]And you still have fuel buyers today that live through that. And that got us into 04, 05, 06,07 where we had a big run up in price. And that run up in price was really primarily due to the Chinese building a lot and the Chinese contracting a lot. That was really the biggest reason. You also had a big development mine uh cigar lake that flooded during that runup and that was a you know an exogenous event that caused a price spike and you had financialization. You had hedge funds buying uranium and you had uranium particip participation corporation come in. So you had financialization plus large contracting but you still had all of that secondary supply. You had megat tons of megawws plus enrichment underfeeding. You probably had 25, 30, maybe 35 million pounds of secondary supply, plus still very large commercial inventories, plus Kazan and prom ramping at an insane pace going from nothing to 70 million pounds in the mid20s.

[00:38:41]That was an absolute gargantuan amount of supply.

[00:38:45]Then Fukushima, more inventory, more over supply into a demand shocked market. And finally, we worked through all of that and said, Justin, where's the evidence of that? Look at what's happened to price. Price doesn't rise in an oversupplied market, period. Full stop in any commodity market. So, we've gone from 18 bucks all the way north of 100, pulled back to mid 80s right now for spot. We've gone from the high 20s term all the way up to 91 term. That happens in an undersupplied market. And the market is under supplied and it will be under supplied for as far as we can see. And who knows what happens. Maybe there's another demand shock and that could happen. Okay, if China tomorrow says, "We're done building reactors. We don't need anymore." All right, that's going to change the thesis a little bit, but that's So, as far as we can tell, that's not about to happen. In fact, they're doubling down. So, this is the first time in the history of this industry where we have tight supply relative to demand going out beyond a 5-year period, severely under supplied relative to projected demand. And it's a market where there is barely any secondary supply coming in. Underfeeding is probably less than 10 million pounds a year right now. um inventories are below average and the total commercial inventories are minimal. So the supply that the industry is going to need has to come out of the ground and that has never happened before. So that's where we're at. That's why I'm saying that a supply shock is highly likely and that it will matter and it will result in price movement because it's so so important that these development projects actually get developed. And that's really the last thing I'll leave you with is that uh utilities really need to wake up to this because and and they seemingly are right. We've got a lot of utilities right now engaging.

[00:40:37]Okay, the the RFPs and the RFIs right now, they're in the physical market.

[00:40:40]Smaller volume, but a lot of utilities kind of testing the waters and seeing what's out there at how much volume at what price can they can they get to cover off late 20s, early 30s. The utilities need to understand that producers went through absolute hell for the last 15 years and there is a pipeline problem for the major producers and so break even doesn't work for them and you've seen the restarts already the brownfield restarts feasibility studies that the production cost would be in the 40s or the ' 50s or maybe even the 60s here we are at 91 they're selling in the 70s 80s 90s and they're none of them are making any money they're cash flow negative so we need higher prices just for that reason alone And the companies that are the big incumbent producers, Kamo, Orano, Uranium 1, Kazadamrom, they're going to need to not only be able to make a profit on on what they're producing now to cover all of the years of loss they just experienced because of the overupp invests and billions and billions of dollars in workforce and development of new projects. And that has to get priced into these contracts. So the industry is slowly understanding this and the evidence is there in the physical market of that and this is why I'm so confident the price needs to go higher. It just absolutely has to in order for that to happen. Otherwise the supply is just not going to be there and we'll see even higher prices. So investing in that now is important and the contracts are the only way that that's going to happen.

[00:42:09]>> Well I think that's a great place to wrap it up as as always a very comprehensive overview of what's going on in the market. Thank you so much and I'll make sure to have you back on quicker next time. This was great.

[00:42:21]>> Anytime. Thanks a lot, Charlotte. I appreciate it.

[00:42:23]>> Of course. And once again, I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and this is Justin Hune with Uranium Insider. Thank you for watching. If you like this video, make sure you hit the like button and subscribe to our channel. We'd also love to hear your thoughts, so leave us a comment below.