A sound structure. An outright short on a miner is two bets at once, the company and the metal, and pairing against same-metal juniors isolates the one you actually have a view on. In a market where gold set 53 record highs in a year, the outright version was a hard trade regardless of the quality of the research. The non-producer point is hard to argue with. TMC rose 53% in the month after two firms published on it, with nothing yet in production to test the story against. Hype has no earnings date.

"A mine is a hole in the ground with a liar on top." ; attributed to Mark Twain We reviewed 33 activist short campaigns against mining companies, from Bre-X's salted cores to the bottom of the Pacific, for our deepest dive yet into why the sector attracts investigators and how the trades actually play out. Inside: •The average target fell just 3.7% in week one, but 42% are higher since publication, possibly a function of the commodity bull market •Dueling $SGML Sigma Lithium reports, 3 years apart, from @ResearchGrizzly and @blueorcainvest •@MorpheusRes vs. Collective Mining $CNL, and our outreach to Colombia's mining regulator •@WolfpackReports calling $METC's $2.4B rare-earth story a "Potemkin mine" •$TMC: shorted by @BonitasResearch, @IcebergResear and @BmfReports across 4 years, and still below every report-day price •@muddywatersre's Carson Block, the market's most famous bear, on why he's long junior mining Read: