The phrase "AI bubble" is used for four different things. They are the use of AI, the AI companies, technology shares in general, and the money being spent on data centres and chips. Samso's view is that most of the commentary is about the last one. Many investors will have read a headline about an AI bubble. The Bank of England has warned about it. So has Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates. The head of OpenAI has said investors might be overexcited. The warnings rarely say which part of AI they mean. Articles about the AI bubble are often about different things. Companies are named below as examples only. WHAT THIS PIECE COVERS 1.00 THE FOUR MEANINGS OF AI BUBBLE The four things the phrase is used for, in a table. 2.00 THE USE OF AI Use is growing. The bubble question is about price. 3.00 THE AI COMPANIES OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI, and how close each is to the share market. 4.00 TECHNOLOGY SHARES IN GENERAL Chips, software and platforms, and their weight in the index. 5.00 THE SPENDING ON DATA CENTRES AND CHIPS The 2026 building plans of four companies, and three concerns about them. 6.00 THE JULY 2026 FALL AND WHAT THE COMMENTATORS HAVE SAID The July fall in chip shares, the warnings, and the case on the other side. 7.00 THE ASX Very few of these companies are listed in Australia. Data centre companies and miners are. 8.00 SAMSO TAKE Samso's view, and what it means for different kinds of ASX company. A note on the vocabulary and the sources. Technical terms are explained where they first appear, and the recurring terms are collected in a vocabulary box at the back, above the references. Each source carries an identifier, [R1] to [R27]. The same identifier appears in the text where that source is used, so each figure can be traced to the document behind it. 1.00 — THE FOUR MEANINGS OF AI BUBBLE The phrase is used for four different things A bubble is a period when the price of an asset rises well above what its earnings can support, and then falls. The word is also used for a building boom, when more is built than customers will pay for. A useful technology can still be overpriced or overbuilt. When a commentator says "AI bubble", the subject is usually one of four things. Table 01 lists them, with examples and with what is listed on the ASX. The four are connected, but they do not carry the same risk. A fall in one does not always mean a fall in the others. The spending and the chip companies are the most closely tied. The first question for any AI bubble headline is which of the four it is about. 2.00 — THE USE OF AI The technology is growing, and the bubble question is about price The use of AI is growing quickly. Samso's earlier Insight on AI economics recorded that Google's token volumes rose roughly seven-fold in a year [R1]. A token is the small chunk of text an AI reads and writes, and it is the unit AI is billed by. Usage and profit are separate questions. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2025, as reported by Fortune, found that 95 per cent of company trials of generative AI had not yet turned a profit [R2]. Generative AI is the kind that produces text, images or computer code on request. The internet was a real technology in 1999 and it is far larger today. Internet shares still fell heavily between 2000 and 2002. When a commentator says AI is a bubble, the claim is almost never that people will stop using it. The claim is about the price being paid for the companies and for the equipment. What that means is that an investor can believe AI will be widely used and still question the price of a share in it. 3.00 — THE AI COMPANIES OpenAI and Anthropic are still private, and xAI is inside SpaceX The companies whose main business is building AI models are the ones most people think of first. For most of this cycle an ordinary investor could not buy them directly, because they were privately owned. Anthropic, the maker of the Claude AI model, raised US$65 billion in late May 2026 at a valuation of US$965 billion. It then lodged confidential paperwork for a United States share market listing [R3]. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, was valued at US$852 billion in a funding round in March 2026 [R4]. A funding round is a sale of new shares to a small group of private investors. OpenAI said on 8 June 2026 that it had also lodged confidential listing paperwork, and that it had not decided when to list [R3]. At 11 October 2026 neither company had listed. Yahoo Finance reported on 4 October 2026 that Anthropic's public prospectus had not yet appeared on the regulator's database, and that reports pointed to a listing in November [R5]. A prospectus is the document a company must publish before it sells shares to the public. xAI makes the Grok AI model. SpaceX bought xAI in February 2026, which brought Grok and the social network X into SpaceX [R7]. SpaceX then listed on the Nasdaq exchange on 12 June 2026 under the code SPCX. It raised about US$75 billion, the largest share market listing on record [R6]. An investor who wants exposure to X or Grok now buys SpaceX, which is also a rocket and satellite company. SpaceX was valued at about US$1.77 trillion at the price its shares were first sold at [R7]. FIG. 01 sets the three valuations beside Nvidia, which is shown for scale. Nvidia is the largest listed company in the AI supply chain. It was valued at about US$5.49 trillion at the close on 27 August 2026 [R9]. OpenAI and Anthropic together carry a private valuation of about US$1.8 trillion, by Samso's addition of the two figures above. Their prospectuses will be the first time the public can read their full accounts. The two largest private AI companies have been valued by private investors so far. They have not yet traded on a share market. 4.00 — TECHNOLOGY SHARES IN GENERAL Chips, software and platforms are three different businesses Technology shares fall into three groups, and the commentary often treats them as one. Semiconductors. These companies design computer chips, make them, or both. A semiconductor is the material a chip is made from, usually silicon. Chips are made on thin discs of silicon called wafers, and PLATE 01 shows one [R25]. Nvidia is the largest chip company by market value. It designs its chips and has them made by other companies. Nvidia reported revenue of US$96.2 billion for the three months to 26 July 2026, up 106 per cent on a year earlier. Its data centre division made up US$89.0 billion of that [R8]. FIG. 02 shows the latest quarter, the quarter before it and the same quarter a year earlier. The last bar is the company's outlook for the next quarter. Revenue roughly doubled in a year, and almost all of it came from equipment for data centres. Nvidia's sales depend directly on AI spending. Software. These companies sell programs and services. Some are adding AI to products they already sell. Their sales do not depend on AI in the way Nvidia's do. Platforms. Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon earn most of their revenue from advertising, online shopping, software, and renting out computing power, which is called cloud computing. They were large and profitable before the current AI cycle. They are also the biggest buyers of AI chips, which section 5.00 covers. All three groups are part of the bubble discussion because of their weight in the share market. At 30 September 2026 the ten largest companies made up 39.1 per cent of the S&P 500 index, the main measure of large United States companies. The single largest company was 8.4 per cent [R10]. In September 2019 the ten largest made up 22.8 per cent [R11]. The two figures come from different sources. FIG. 03 shows the change. An index fund holds every company in an index in proportion to its size. An investor in an ordinary S&P 500 index fund has close to 40 cents of every dollar in ten companies. A fall in those ten companies moves the whole index. 5.00 — THE SPENDING ON DATA CENTRES AND CHIPS Four companies plan to spend more than US$700 billion in 2026 A data centre is a large, heavily powered building full of computers. AI models are trained and run inside them. PLATE 02 shows rows of computer cabinets of the kind a data centre holds [R26]. Four companies are the largest spenders. They are Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta, and the industry calls them hyperscalers because of the size of the data centre networks they run. Their spending is reported as capital expenditure, which is money spent on long-lived assets such as buildings and equipment. Each company updated its 2026 plan with its results in late July 2026. Amazon expects about US$220 billion, up from about US$200 billion [R13]. Alphabet expects US$195 billion to US$205 billion, up from US$180 billion to US$190 billion [R14]. Meta expects US$130 billion to US$145 billion, narrowed from US$125 billion to US$145 billion [R12]. Microsoft's figure was reported as about US$175 billion, down from about US$190 billion. The fall comes from an accounting change. More of Microsoft's future data centre leases will be counted as rent and not as capital expenditure. Microsoft said its investment plans were otherwise unchanged [R15]. Added together, the four plans come to between US$720 billion and US$745 billion for 2026. That addition is Samso's. The four companies spent about US$410 billion in 2025, on a published estimate [R16]. FIG. 04 shows the two years. The 2026 plans are about 76 to 82 per cent larger than the 2025 spend, on Samso's arithmetic. The totals are all capital expenditure, so they include some spending that is not for AI. Much of the money buys chips, which Samso reads as a main reason Nvidia's revenue in FIG. 02 has doubled. The buildings need land, power and network cables. FIG. 05 is a map published by a United States Department of Energy laboratory. It shows where the data centres are, and the power lines and fibre routes they depend on [R27]. Data centres are built in clusters near large power lines and fibre routes. The building plans depend on electricity supply as well as money. The warnings point to three features of the spending. The spending is ahead of the revenue. The companies are building capacity now for demand they expect later. If the demand arrives late, the buildings and chips are already paid for. Chips lose value quickly. Microsoft now counts the life of a data centre building as 25 years [R15]. Faster chips are released far more often than that, and an older chip earns less once they arrive. If a company builds more than it needs, the chips lose value while they wait. More of it is being funded with debt, and the largest supplier has backed a customer. The Bank of England said in September 2026 that a growing amount of AI investment is being financed by borrowing [R17]. In July 2026, Axios reported that Nvidia was weighing a guarantee of US$250 billion to back the financing of an OpenAI data centre project. Nvidia's shares fell about 4.5 per cent during that day's trading [R18]. Fortune later reported the final guarantee was up to US$105 billion [R19]. The concern is known as circular financing. It means a supplier provides money or guarantees to a customer, and that helps the customer buy the supplier's product. It can make demand look stronger than it is, and it ties the supplier's results to the customer's. Samso's view is that this fourth meaning is the one most of the bubble commentary is describing. The questions being asked are whether more than US$700 billion of building planned for 2026 can earn a return, and who is exposed if it cannot. Samso's Insight on ASX data centre stocks found the same issue at a smaller scale in Australia. Research commissioned by the Australian Energy Market Operator estimated that six in every seven megawatts of data centre grid connection requests would never be built [R21]. A megawatt is a unit of electrical power, and a data centre's size is measured by the power it draws. In plain terms, a request to connect a data centre to the grid is a long way from a data centre being built. 6.00 — THE JULY 2026 FALL AND WHAT THE COMMENTATORS HAVE SAID Chip shares fell in July 2026, and what each side says Shares in chip companies fell sharply in July 2026. On 28 July the main United States index of chip companies fell as much as 6 per cent in a day. The Nasdaq-100 index, which holds 100 large companies and is weighted towards technology, was 9.7 per cent below its record high. Fortune reported that fears about hyperscalers overspending were among the causes [R20]. The Bank of England's Financial Policy Committee reviewed the episode at its meeting on 25 September 2026. Its record says equity valuations for AI companies "fell sharply in July". It says some leveraged investors took significant losses, and that there was "no spillover to core markets". A leveraged investor is one who invests with borrowed money. The record also says "the risk of a sharper correction persists" [R17]. In plain terms, AI share prices fell and the fall did not spread to the main financial markets. The Bank of England still sees a risk of a larger fall. Ray Dalio, the founder of the investment firm Bridgewater Associates, wrote on X in January 2026 that the AI boom was in the early stages of a bubble. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, said in August 2025 that investors as a whole might be overexcited about AI [R2]. THE CASE ON THE OTHER SIDE The companies in this discussion earn large profits today. Nvidia, which receives much of the spending, reported a net profit of US$59.7 billion for the three months to 26 July 2026 [R8]. The four largest spenders were large and profitable before the current AI cycle. This is the main difference from 2000, when many internet companies had little revenue. The buyers say they cannot get enough capacity. Amazon's chief executive, Andy Jassy, said in July 2026 that Amazon would not have enough capacity to meet all the demand it has in 2026 [R13]. Microsoft said its investment plans were unchanged apart from an accounting change [R15]. Nvidia's chief executive, Jensen Huang, said with the August 2026 results that "the AI infrastructure buildout is at full steam" [R8]. The July fall did not spread. The Bank of England's record says there was "no spillover to core markets" [R17]. The executives' comments are company statements. The revenue and profit figures are reported results. Nobody quoted here is saying that AI does not work. Both sides are arguing about the share prices and the spending. The share prices in meaning three depend on the spending in meaning four, which is why Samso puts the spending first. The July fall showed that AI share prices can drop quickly when investors doubt the spending. Whether the spending will earn a return is still open. 7.00 — THE ASX The ASX has little to offer in AI Very few of the companies in the AI bubble discussion are listed in Australia. No ASX company builds a leading AI model, or designs or makes AI chips in large volumes. The large platform companies are not listed here either. Samso covered this in How to Buy the AI Build-Out on the ASX. That Insight found the ASX semiconductor names are mostly early-stage companies that license a technology [R22]. An investor who wants the AI companies, the chip companies or the platforms can buy them on an overseas exchange or through a fund. Some of those funds are exchange traded funds quoted on the ASX. What the ASX does have belongs to the fourth meaning, the spending. Table 02 sets it out. Data centres. A small number of ASX companies own or operate data centres. Samso's Insight ASX Data Centre Stocks, What the Market Is Actually Paying covered eleven companies with some exposure. Four of them own or operate the buildings directly [R21]. That Insight found that binding contracts moved share prices and the gains held, while non-binding agreements produced short moves that faded. A binding contract commits both sides. A non-binding agreement lets either side walk away. The materials. Data centres need copper for wiring and power, and they need electricity. BHP's chief financial officer, Vandita Pant, told the Financial Times in September 2024 that data centres were then less than 1 per cent of copper demand and were expected to be 6 to 7 per cent by 2050 [R23]. The International Energy Agency projects that electricity use by data centres worldwide will more than double by 2030, to about 945 terawatt hours. That is slightly more than Japan uses in a year today [R24]. This is the link between the AI bubble discussion and the resources companies that make up much of the ASX. Part of the long-term demand case for copper now rests on the data centre build continuing. On BHP's 2024 figure, data centres are a small part of copper demand. Samso's reading is that a slowdown in AI spending would affect the copper forecasts more than it would affect current copper sales. 8.00 — SAMSO TAKE Samso view SAMSO TAKE Samso's view is that the AI bubble discussion is mostly a discussion about data centres and chips. The use of AI is growing, and that part is not in question. The debate is about more than US$700 billion of spending planned for 2026 to supply it. It is also about the share prices of the companies receiving that money, and of the companies spending it. Those companies are profitable today. For an ASX investor the direct exposure is small. The ASX does not have the AI companies, the chip companies or the platforms. The indirect exposure is larger. An investor with an S&P 500 index fund already has close to 40 cents of every dollar in ten companies. On the ASX it differs by the kind of company. The large miners carry it through copper, because the long-term copper forecasts now include data centres. The ASX data centre companies carry it most directly. The small caps are affected through announcements. A small company that signs a data centre agreement can move a long way on it, and the earlier Samso work found that only binding contracts held their gains. The micro explorers are affected by market mood. In Samso's experience, money for early-stage exploration is usually harder to raise when large overseas markets fall. So the next time a headline says "AI bubble", which of the four is it talking about? THE VOCABULARY, IN PLAIN ENGLISH Bubble A period when an asset's price rises well above what its earnings can support, and then falls. The word is also used for a building boom, when more is built than customers will pay for. Capital expenditure Money spent on long-lived assets such as buildings and equipment. Often shortened to capex. Circular financing A supplier gives money or guarantees to a customer, and that helps the customer buy the supplier's product. Data centre A large, heavily powered building full of computers that store data and run software. Generative AI Software that produces text, images or computer code on request. Hyperscaler One of the very large companies that run global computing networks. Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta are the four usually meant. Index fund A fund that holds every company in a share market index, in proportion to each company's size. Leveraged investor An investor who invests with borrowed money. Platform company A very large company whose online services are used by very large numbers of people or businesses, such as search, social networks, online shopping and cloud computing. Cloud computing Renting out computing power and storage from data centres over the internet. Funding round and prospectus A funding round is a sale of new shares to a small group of private investors. A prospectus is the document a company must publish before it sells shares to the public. Megawatt A unit of electrical power. A data centre's size is measured by the power it draws. Semiconductor and wafer A semiconductor is the material computer chips are made from, usually silicon. A wafer is the thin disc of silicon that chips are made on. Token The small chunk of text an AI reads and writes, and the unit it is billed by. Valuation The total value placed on a company, by the share market or by private investors. 9.00 — REFERENCES AND SOURCES Where every figure comes from FIG. 01 to FIG. 04 were drawn by Samso from the published figures named under each one. FIG. 05 is a map reproduced from the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory. PLATE 01 and PLATE 02 are United States government photographs in the public domain. Each identifier below, [R1] to [R27], appears in the text at the point the source is used. Figures described as reported by a named outlet were not checked against the originating document, and the reference says so. [R1] Samso Insights, "The Paradox: The Price Fell, The Bill Rose - AI Agent Economics". The Google token volume figure is carried from Samso's earlier work. www.samso.com.au/post/ai-agent-economics-tokens-are-the-bill [R2] Fortune, "Ray Dalio says AI is in 'the early stages of a bubble,' so watch out for 2026", 6 January 2026. Source for the Dalio statement, the Altman statement of August 2025 and the MIT study figure, each as reported by Fortune. The MIT study itself was not read. fortune.com/2026/01/06/ray-dalio-says-ai-is-in-the-early-stages-of-a-bubble-so-watch-out-for-2026 [R3] Reuters, "Factbox: OpenAI joins AI listing queue with Anthropic", 8 June 2026, via Yahoo Finance. finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/factbox-mega-ipos-loom-wall-153111631.html [R4] Bloomberg, "OpenAI Joins a Massive AI IPO Pipeline Now Worth $3.6 Trillion", 9 June 2026. news.bgov.com/financial-accounting/openai-filed-confidentially-for-ipo-as-rivals-race-to-market [R5] Yahoo Finance, "Anthropic's Public S-1 Still Missing From EDGAR as October IPO Window Opens", 4 October 2026. finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/anthropic-public-1-still-missing-210349323.html [R6] NPR, "SpaceX IPO makes history as largest ever. Stock gains 19% on first day", 12 June 2026. www.michiganpublic.org/2026-06-12/spacex-stock-skyrockets-on-high-demand-on-first-day-of-trading [R7] Kotak Neo, "SpaceX Debuts on Nasdaq, Opens 11% Above IPO Price", 12 June 2026. Source for the February 2026 purchase of xAI and the valuation at the offer price. www.kotakneo.com/news/ipos/spacex-shares-debut-on-nasdaq-opens-11-percent-above-ipo-price/ [R8] NVIDIA Corporation, "NVIDIA Announces Financial Results for Second Quarter Fiscal 2027", 26 August 2026, as lodged with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001045810/000104581026000073/q2fy27pr.htm [R9] Rivkin, NVIDIA Corporation share research note, 31 August 2026. Source for the market value at the close on 27 August 2026. rivkin.com.au/?p=37534 [R10] S&P Dow Jones Indices data at 30 September 2026, as reported by KuCoin, "Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft S&P 500 Concentration". The S&P factsheet itself was not read. www.kucoin.com/blog/bd-nvidia-apple-and-microsoft-sp500-concentration [R11] ChartRow, "S&P 500 concentration (2026)", weights taken from index fund filings. chartrow.com/sp500/concentration [R12] Meta Platforms, "Meta Reports Second Quarter 2026 Results", 29 July 2026. investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2026/Meta-Reports-Second-Quarter-2026-Results/default.aspx [R13] Fortune, report on Amazon's second quarter 2026 results and earnings call, 30 July 2026. Amazon's release was not read. fortune.com/2026/07/30/andy-jassy-amazon-capex-demand-aws-pga-tour/ [R14] The Motley Fool, "Alphabet will spend as much as $205 billion this year", 30 July 2026. Alphabet's release was not read. www.fool.com/investing/2026/07/30/alphabet-will-spend-as-much-as-205-billion-this-ye [R15] CFO Dive, "Microsoft holds line on AI spending plans", 30 July 2026. Microsoft's transcript was not read. www.cfodive.com/news/microsoft-holds-line-ai-spending-plans/826648/ [R16] ValueAdd VC, "Meta AI Capex 2026: The $145 Billion Guidance Raise and What It Buys", 24 July 2026, updated 5 October 2026. Source for the 2025 combined total. The four companies' annual reports were not read. valueaddvc.com/blog/meta-145b-ai-capex-2026-why-zuckerberg-raised-guidance-twice [R17] Bank of England, "Record of the Financial Policy Committee meeting on 25 September 2026", published 30 September 2026. www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/financial-policy-committee-record/2026/fpc-summary-and-record-september-2026 [R18] Axios, "Nvidia reignites 'circular' financing concerns as it weighs OpenAI deal", 27 July 2026. axios.com/2026/07/27/nvidia-openai-financing-ai-jensen-huang-ssi [R19] Fortune, report of 18 August 2026 that the Nvidia guarantee for OpenAI came in US$145 billion lower than first reported, at up to US$105 billion. fortune.com [R20] Fortune, "'A lot of panic around the AI investment': How a chip slump is driving the Nasdaq toward correction", 28 July 2026. fortune.com/2026/07/28/why-are-stocks-down-chips-panic-semiconductors/ [R21] Samso Insights, "ASX Data Centre Stocks: What the Market Is Actually Paying", 6 September 2026. www.samso.com.au/post/asx-data-centre-stocks-what-the-market-is-paying [R22] Samso Insights, "How to Buy the AI Build-Out on the ASX", 30 July 2026. www.samso.com.au/post/asx-ai-stocks-semiconductors-data-centres [R23] Mining Digital, "BHP Warns AI Boom Could Worsen Copper Shortage", published 16 September 2024, reporting BHP's chief financial officer speaking to the Financial Times. The Financial Times article was not read. miningdigital.com/supply-chain-management/bhp-warns-ai-boom-could-worsen-copper-shortage [R24] International Energy Agency projection, as reported by the International Copper Association Australia, "Copper's Race To The Future", 18 July 2025. The IEA report was not read. copper.com.au/news/general/coppers-race-to-the-future-well-2030/ [R25] US Department of Energy, "Silicon wafer researcher", photograph taken at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 5 August 2013. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. commons.wikimedia.org [R26] NASA, "Columbia Supercomputer, NASA Advanced Supercomputing Facility", photograph by Trower, 2006. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. commons.wikimedia.org [R27] National Renewable Energy Laboratory, US Department of Energy, map of data centre infrastructure in the United States in 2025, published May 2025. The map states that its data comes from Hitachi Energy. 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The Matrix Critical Minerals IPO offers shares at A$0.20 to raise A$8 million to A$12 million. The company is the spin-out of the Narraburra Rare Earths Project from Orbit Resources, formerly Godolphin Resources. The offer opens on 13 October 2026 and is due to close on 30 October 2026. The Matrix Critical Minerals IPO puts a rare earths project into its own ASX company. The project has a Mineral Resource, which is an estimate of tonnes and grade. Matrix Critical Minerals Limited (proposed ASX: MTX) is offering shares at A$0.20 to raise A$8 million to A$12 million [R1]. It holds the Narraburra Rare Earths Project in New South Wales, which is being spun out of Orbit Resources Limited (ASX: OBT), formerly Godolphin Resources. We are looking at it because China has put export controls on several heavy rare earths. Rare earths are a group of metals used in magnets and electronics. The controlled ones include yttrium, dysprosium and terbium. The company presents Narraburra as a source of those three. This is Samso’s first piece on the company. THE SOURCE DOCUMENT Matrix Critical Minerals Limited, Replacement Prospectus dated 3 October 2026 and lodged on that date with ASIC, the corporate regulator. It replaces the original prospectus dated 25 September 2026. It runs to 424 pages. It includes reports by MinVal, Hetherington Legal and BDO, the independent experts who reviewed the geology, the licences and the financial information. It is available on the Matrix Critical Minerals prospectus page. The Matrix Critical Minerals IPO Offer A prospectus is the legal document a company must issue before it sells shares to the public. This one is a replacement prospectus, which means it takes the place of an earlier version lodged with ASIC [R1]. The offer is for up to 60,000,000 new shares at A$0.20 each (TABLE 01). The minimum raise is A$8,000,000. If the company does not reach it, the offer does not proceed and the money is returned. The MTX IPO has two parts. The priority offer sets aside up to 10,000,000 shares for Orbit shareholders with a registered address in Australia, New Zealand or Panama on 12 October 2026. The public offer takes the rest. MST Financial Services is the lead manager, the broker that runs the offer. The offer is not underwritten, which means no broker has agreed to buy the shares that investors do not take [R1]. Orbit holds all 62,500,120 existing Matrix shares. It was issued 62,500,000 of them as payment for the company that owns the projects. Orbit proposes to distribute 50,000,096 of those shares to its shareholders. This is called an in-specie distribution, which is a distribution paid in shares and not in cash. The prospectus works on one Matrix share for every 17 Orbit shares held [R1]. Orbit shareholders vote on two resolutions on 5 November 2026. The first approves the Matrix listing and is a condition of the offer [R1]. The second approves the in-specie distribution. If the second fails, Orbit keeps all its Matrix shares [R3]. The ASX upcoming floats page showed a listing date of 23 November 2026 when Samso read it on 7 October 2026 [R2]. The Narraburra Rare Earths Project Narraburra is four exploration licences covering about 467 square kilometres near Temora in central-west New South Wales (FIG. 01) [R1]. Rare earth elements, or REE, are a group of metals used in magnets, electronics and specialist alloys. At Narraburra they are in clay and clay-weathered rock above a granite. Geologists call that weathered material saprolite and saprock. The independent technical report by MinVal describes the deposit as large-tonnage, low-grade and clay-hosted. It classes Narraburra as a hybrid ion-adsorption deposit. In an ion-adsorption clay the rare earths are held loosely on the clay and can be washed off with a salt solution. MinVal says a portion of the rare earths here is in other minerals [R1]. In our experience that portion is usually harder to leach. The Mineral Resource is 94.9 million tonnes at 739 parts per million (ppm) of total rare earth oxides, or TREO. A Mineral Resource is an estimate of tonnes and grade reported under the JORC Code, the Australian reporting code. TREO is the combined weight of all the rare earth oxides, and 739 ppm is 0.0739 per cent. A cut-off is the lowest grade counted in the estimate. Here it is 300 ppm of TREO with the cerium oxide taken out. About half is Indicated, the middle of the three confidence categories, at 47.6 million tonnes at 780 ppm. The other half is Inferred, the lowest confidence category, at 47.4 million tonnes at 698 ppm (FIG. 02). The Mineral Resource includes a higher-grade part of 20 million tonnes at 1,079 ppm TREO, reported at a 600 ppm cut-off on the same basis [R1]. Orbit, then named Godolphin Resources, first reported the estimate on 19 April 2023 and the prospectus restates it. The estimate draws on 31 diamond drill holes that the company drilled in 2022. Diamond drilling recovers a solid core of rock. It also draws on 8 reverse circulation holes from 2006 and 26 aircore holes from 2008, drilled by a previous owner. Reverse circulation returns rock chips. The report says the aircore samples came up as semi-continuous gravel or core [R1]. The independent report says the mineralised zone is 10 to 25 metres thick and reaches a maximum of 48 metres below surface (FIG. 03). It says the deposit is open to the north, south and west. Open is a great way to say that drilling has not yet found the edge. It implies but does not mean that the mineralisation continues [R1]. Narraburra Metallurgy and the Mixed Rare Earth Carbonate Metallurgy is the work of getting the metal out of the rock. Orbit ran its test work with the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), the federal government’s nuclear science agency, which also does minerals processing test work. The clay is leached in tanks. It is mixed with a mildly acidic solution of ammonium sulphate, a common salt, which dissolves the rare earths. The independent report gives the best tested conditions from the August 2024 slurry leach tests as 24 hours at 50 degrees, with acid use of about 1.0 to 3.3 kilograms a tonne. Those tests extracted up to 81 per cent of the magnet rare earths. The rare earths are then recovered as a mixed rare earth carbonate, or MREC (FIG. 04). MREC is an intermediate product sold to a refiner [R1]. The first MREC graded 57.6 per cent TREO. Yttrium oxide was 18.7 per cent of the product by weight. Dysprosium and terbium oxides together were 3.1 per cent, and neodymium and praseodymium oxides 11.1 per cent. Those last four are the magnet rare earths, the ones used in permanent magnets. The company says this mix is rich in heavy rare earths compared with many other clay-hosted projects [R1]. Samso has covered MREC test work at another Australian clay project in OD6 Metals’ Splinter Rock results. The independent report repeats the recoveries Orbit reported. Recovery is the share of the metal in the clay that ends up in the product. In the later program that made the first MREC, leaching extracted 90 per cent of the magnet rare earths. Overall recovery of the magnet rare earths from clay to the first MREC was 77 per cent. A second MREC added a step that cut uranium in the product from 223 ppm to 7 ppm. Overall magnet rare earth recovery for the second product was 67 per cent. Those recoveries are for the magnet rare earths. We did not find a recovery figure for yttrium in the independent report’s metallurgy section [R1]. The prospectus cites Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a price reporting agency, for a yttrium oxide price outside China of US$1,575 a kilogram in April 2026. It gives about US$10 a kilogram inside China. It also says Benchmark was not involved in the prospectus and has not consented to being named [R1]. Samso has not checked those prices against the Benchmark source. Use of Funds from the MTX IPO Matrix has no revenue, and the prospectus says it expects to rely on equity funding, which is money raised by selling new shares, for the foreseeable future. The company will have A$8,001,000 at the minimum raise and A$12,001,000 at the maximum, which is the offer proceeds plus A$1,000 of existing cash (TABLE 02) [R1]. Narraburra takes A$4,185,000 at the minimum raise and A$7,880,000 at the maximum (FIG. 05). The largest item inside that is drilling to lift confidence in the resource. The budget also covers pilot-scale MREC production, a scoping study and the start of a pre-feasibility study. Pilot scale is a larger trial run than a laboratory test. A scoping study is a first-pass technical and economic study of a possible mine, and a pre-feasibility study is the more detailed study that follows it [R1]. The prospectus says the minimum raise leaves less money for the pre-feasibility study. In that case it says the company is likely to need more time and more funds to finish it [R1]. The company will repay a loan from Orbit that covers offer costs Orbit has paid. The balance was A$401,071 at 31 July 2026, and further offer costs paid by Orbit before completion are also repayable. The company will also reimburse up to A$150,000 of Orbit’s costs. The prospectus puts the total expenses of the offers, with those two items included, at A$1,753,761 at the minimum raise. By Samso’s arithmetic that is 21.9 per cent of the funds [R1]. Capital Structure, the Orbit Holding and Escrow At the maximum raise there will be 122,500,120 shares on issue (TABLE 03). At A$0.20 that is a market capitalisation, the value of all the shares, of A$24,500,024. The existing 62,500,120 shares are worth A$12,500,024 at the offer price by Samso’s arithmetic. That is the value the offer puts on the projects before any new money goes in. Escrow means a holder cannot sell for a set period. Orbit’s remaining 12,500,024 shares are restricted for 24 months from the day the shares start trading, and so are all the options. An option is a right to buy a share later at a set price. Shares bought in the offer are not restricted. Section 1.2 of the prospectus gives Orbit’s restricted holding as about 12.20 per cent assuming maximum subscription. The ownership table in the same section shows 12.20 per cent at the minimum raise and 10.20 per cent at the maximum [R1]. The company has applied for an ASX waiver so that the 50,000,096 shares going to Orbit shareholders are not escrowed. A waiver is the ASX agreeing not to apply one of its rules. It has not been granted. The prospectus says the ASX has given conditional in-principle advice that it would be likely to confirm the escrow rule does not apply. If it is confirmed, those shares can trade from the first day [R1]. Matrix Critical Minerals Board and Related Parties “Our ambition is to build the Company into Australia’s next major rare earth minerals company.” Mr Christopher Gibbs, Executive Chair, in his letter to investors in the replacement prospectus dated 3 October 2026 [R1] Mr Christopher Gibbs becomes Executive Chair on listing, on A$325,000 a year plus superannuation. From 2021 to 2025 he was on the board of American Rare Earths (ASX: ARR), a company Samso has written on. He was its Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer from 2021 to 2023 and Chief Executive Officer again from 2024 to 2025. Dr Quinton Hills becomes Technical Director on A$300,000 a year plus superannuation. He has been study manager for Narraburra at Orbit since February 2024, and he is the Competent Person for the exploration results in the prospectus. A Competent Person is the qualified professional who takes responsibility for a reported result [R1]. Mr Gibbs is also a non-executive director of Orbit. Ms Jeneta Owens, a non-executive director of Matrix on A$60,000 a year, is the Managing Director of Orbit. The directors and the Chief Financial Officer are to receive 11,000,000 options between them for services already provided. Orbit can nominate one non-executive director while it holds 5 per cent or more, or while it has escrowed shares. The prospectus says that period ends two years after listing [R1]. What the Prospectus Does Not Settle The independent report calls the grade comparatively modest. It says the economics depend heavily on the mix of rare earths recovered, low mining costs, high recovery, scale and strong prices. It describes rare earth prices as volatile and opaque. It says the project still requires further refinement before a robust development case can be established [R1]. The company says yttrium is about 26 per cent of the rare earths in the resource. The independent report describes the deposit as weakly enriched in light rare earths. It puts the magnet rare earths at about 24 per cent of the rare earth oxides once yttrium is excluded. The two figures measure different things. The company’s figure is yttrium as a share of all the rare earths in the resource. The independent report’s figure is the magnet rare earths as a share of the rare earths other than yttrium. The independent report also says thorium levels are low [R1]. The prospectus has no scoping study result, so there is no capital or operating cost estimate. The project has no Ore Reserve, which is the part of a resource shown to be economic to mine. The prospectus discloses no offtake agreement, which is a contract to sell the product. The company says a third, larger batch of MREC has been approved for delivery to potential offtake partners [R1]. Land access is not fully agreed. The independent report says access has been agreed program by program with each landholder, and that the resource is on two properties. The risk section says only one land access agreement is in place for Narraburra. One of the four licences, EL 9601, reached its expiry date on 31 August 2026. A renewal was lodged on 20 August 2026 and the licence stays in effect until that is decided [R1]. Near-term Milestones to Watch The offer opening on 13 October 2026 and closing on 30 October 2026. The Orbit shareholder vote on 5 November 2026. The ASX decision on the escrow waiver for the in-specie shares. ASX admission and the first day of trading, expected on 23 November 2026. The first infill drilling at Narraburra, which is closer-spaced drilling inside the resource, and the third batch of MREC from ANSTO. The scoping study. Samso Concluding Comments Unlike most of the explorer floats we review, Matrix lists with a Mineral Resource that is half Indicated. ANSTO has already made a product from it in test work. Our Research Workup on Australian Rare Earths covers another clay-hosted rare earths project in more detail. The Narraburra scoping study is still to come. In our experience the economics of a clay-hosted project at this grade depend on how much of the rare earths is recovered and what the acid and other chemicals cost. The two-year budget is aimed at those two questions, and rare earth prices are outside the company’s control. SAMSO TAKE We like that this is a single-purpose company. Narraburra was one of several projects inside a gold and copper explorer. Here it has a separate board and budget. The Chair has run a rare earths company before. The prospectus gives weight to the yttrium price. That price is a result of China’s export controls, so it could fall if the policy changes. We would want to see the scoping study show that Narraburra is still economic at prices well below the April 2026 numbers. If Orbit shareholders approve the distribution, about 50 million shares go to holders who did not choose to buy Matrix. If the waiver is confirmed they can sell from the first day. That is normal for a spin-out. How much of the early trading will be those holders selling? THE OTHER WAY TO READ THIS On the favourable side, the market capitalisation at the offer price is A$20.5 million to A$24.5 million. The resource is 94.9 million tonnes at 739 ppm TREO in New South Wales. The test work has already produced a mixed rare earth carbonate with low uranium. The independent report says Western governments are giving policy support to rare earths supply from outside China. On the other side, the resource estimate dates from April 2023, and the infill drilling in the budget is the next work on it. More than a fifth of the minimum raise goes to offer costs and to Orbit. The company says it will need more capital to become a developer. VOCABULARY, IN PLAIN ENGLISH Rare earth elements (REE) A group of 17 metals used in magnets, electronics, lasers and specialist alloys. Heavy rare earths The heavier members of the group, such as dysprosium, terbium and yttrium. Magnet rare earths Neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium, the four used in high-strength permanent magnets. Yttrium A rare earth used in heat-resistant coatings for turbine blades, and in ceramics, lasers and electronics. TREO Total rare earth oxides. The combined weight of all the rare earth oxides in a sample. ppm Parts per million. 1,000 ppm is 0.1 per cent. Mixed rare earth carbonate (MREC) An intermediate product that holds the rare earths together. A refiner separates it into the individual rare earths. Saprolite and saprock Rock that has weathered to clay, and rock that is partly weathered. Geologists use the two names for the layers above fresh rock. JORC Code The Australian code that sets how exploration results, resources and reserves are reported. Mineral Resource An estimate of the tonnes and grade of mineralisation, reported under the JORC Code. Indicated is a higher confidence category than Inferred. Ore Reserve The part of a Mineral Resource that a study has shown to be economic to mine. Competent Person The qualified geologist or engineer who takes responsibility for a reported result or estimate. Leaching Soaking mined material in a liquid to dissolve the metal out of it. Here the liquid is a mildly acidic ammonium sulphate solution. Cut-off The lowest grade counted in a resource estimate. Ion-adsorption clay A clay deposit where the rare earths are held loosely on the clay and can be washed off with a salt solution. Infill drilling Closer-spaced drilling inside a resource to lift confidence in the estimate. Scoping study A first-pass technical and economic study of a possible mine. Pre-feasibility study The more detailed study that follows a scoping study. In-specie distribution A distribution to shareholders paid in shares or other assets and not in cash. Escrow A period in which a holder cannot sell. Option A right to buy a share later at a set price. Offtake agreement A contract to sell a mine’s product to a buyer. Market capitalisation The number of shares on issue multiplied by the share price. References and sources Every company figure in this piece comes from the prospectus unless another source is named. Where two parts of the prospectus disagree, both figures are quoted as published. [R1] Matrix Critical Minerals Limited, Replacement Prospectus dated 3 October 2026 and lodged with ASIC on that date. It includes the Independent Technical Assessment Report by MinVal Pty Ltd, the Independent Tenement Report by Hetherington Legal and the Independent Limited Assurance Report by BDO Corporate Finance Australia. Available from the company website, mtxcm.com.au. [R2] ASX, Upcoming floats and listings. Read on 7 October 2026. https://www.asx.com.au/listings/upcoming-floats-and-listings [R3] Orbit Resources Limited (ASX: OBT), Notice of General Meeting and Explanatory Memorandum, dated 7 October 2026, for the meeting on 5 November 2026. https://www.asx.com.au/markets/company/OBT Cover image: the Narraburra Mineral Resource plan from the Matrix Critical Minerals Limited replacement prospectus dated 3 October 2026, Independent Technical Assessment Report by MinVal, Figure 7 (PDF page 150). MinVal credits the figure to the Orbit website. The Samso Way – Seek the Research Here at Samso, we pride ourselves on delivering content for investors that is independent and informed by over three decades of experience in the industry. Our content is well-researched and is only created if I see merit in discussing the company's story. Our mission is simple. Cut through the noise and spotlight what matters. 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Cheryl Maley is presenting Starpharma to investors, which is what put the company in front of us. What follows is about the share price line and nothing else. Somebody pulls up SPL, sees 80 cents against 8.6 cents sixteen months ago, and says it looks like it is trending up. This piece tests that sentence with the measures a technical trader would use. The data is two years of daily closes and volume, 18 September 2024 to 18 September 2026, 508 trading sessions, cross-checked against the ASX company page and Listcorp. [R2] [R8] All prices in this piece are as at the close of ASX trading on 18 September 2026. 1.00 WHAT THE CHART LOOKS LIKE FIG. 01 is the whole two years. A year between 8.6 cents and 14.5 cents, a single step in September 2025, then a climb to 80.0 cents. The last close of 80.0 cents is 3.6 per cent under the highest price traded in the past twelve months, 83.0 cents, and 1.2 per cent under the highest close, 81.0 cents. The first impression survives contact with the chart. It does look like an uptrend. 2.00 THE MOVING AVERAGES, AND WHAT THEY ARE A moving average is the average of the last n closing prices, worked out again each day so the window slides forward. The 200-day version is the one most professional traders watch, and it entered the charting canon through Edwards and Magee in 1948. [R7] Paul Tudor Jones is widely reported to use it as a risk filter, which is a statement about how one trader works rather than evidence that the line predicts anything. On SPL the 200-day average is 58.4 cents and the price is 37.1 per cent above it. The 50-day average is 74.0 cents, which is 26.8 per cent above the 200-day. Both lines are rising, and the 200-day has lifted 6.5 per cent over the last twenty sessions alone. The faster average is above the slower one, both are climbing, and the price is above both. That arrangement is what the trend-following tradition reads as an uptrend, so on this measure the reader's sentence is supported. 3.00 THE ONE SESSION THAT BUILT THE SLOPE Most of that slope comes from a single day. On 22 September 2025 SPL opened at 20.0 cents against a previous close of 13.0 cents, an opening gap of 53.8 per cent. It traded as high as 25.0 cents and closed at 22.5 cents, up 73.08 per cent. Counted as a share of the compounded return, that one session is 26.1 per cent of the entire two-year move, which is Samso's own arithmetic. The volume tells you it was an event rather than drift. 21,593,559 shares changed hands. The median of the twenty sessions before it was 216,495 shares, so the day ran at 99.7 times normal. FIG. 02 draws those twenty sessions on the same scale as the one that followed them, which is why they look like nothing at all. A gap is an opening price away from the previous close, and the chart tradition treats a large one on a small company as an announcement until shown otherwise, and this one was. The ASX release lodged at 6.50am that morning was the Genentech licence agreement. [R4] What the chart records is that the market repriced the company in one session and has not gone back. Nothing since has traded at or below 13.0 cents. Volume did not go back either. FIG. 03 shows median daily volume at 226,196 shares across the year before that session and 1,001,961 shares across the year since. A pattern drawn on a stock turning over a few tens of thousands of dollars a day is drawn by a handful of participants, and SPL is no longer that stock. Three opening gaps of 8 per cent or more appear in the two years, and all three fall on days the company lodged something the ASX marked price sensitive. [R1] SAMSO TAKE A single session carrying a quarter of a two-year move is something to hold in mind when reading everything drawn from that series. The moving averages, the channel and the range all inherit that one morning. They describe the market accurately, and they do not tell you the market arrived at its view gradually, because it did not. So when a chart is built on one repricing, what is a reader actually measuring afterwards, the company or the day? 4.00 WHAT ADX SAYS ABOUT THE SAME CHART ADX, the Average Directional Index, was introduced by J. Welles Wilder in New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems in 1978, the book that also gave the market RSI, the Average True Range and the Parabolic SAR. It answers a different question from the moving averages. [R5] It does not say which way a price is going. It says how decisively it is going anywhere. Convention puts a trending market above 25 and a directionless one below 20, and those are conventions from the literature rather than a demonstrated result. SPL's ADX reads 14.6. FIG. 04 shows where that falls. The measure peaked at 55.4 on 9 October 2025, in the weeks after the re-rate, which is exactly when the price was moving decisively. It last closed above 25 on 10 June 2026 and has been under 20 since 20 July 2026, forty-five sessions ago. Wilder's two companion lines, +DI and -DI, separate the upward daily movement from the downward. They read 29.8 against 19.4, so what movement there is still tilts upward. The direction has not turned. The conviction behind it has thinned. The Relative Strength Index, Wilder's again, compares recent gains to recent losses on a scale of nought to 100. It reads 59.9, which is neither of his thresholds. FIG. 05 shows why his overbought level of 70 travels badly here. SPL held above it for thirteen straight sessions twice, and the first of those readings came on a close of 22.5 cents. On a share being repriced, overbought usually describes speed rather than a level to sell into, and that is Samso's own reading. 5.00 THE RANGE SINCE AUGUST A Donchian channel, named after Richard Donchian, a commodity trader active from the 1940s and one of the earliest systematic trend followers, draws the highest high and the lowest low of a set number of sessions. [R6] Price closing outside the channel is what traders call a break. FIG. 06 draws the last six months inside that channel. The last close above the upper line was 5 August 2026, thirty-two sessions ago. Every close since 3 August has landed between 69.5 cents and 81.0 cents, a range of about 16 per cent, and the net movement across those thirty-five sessions is 7.4 per cent. That is what a low ADX looks like when you put it back on the price chart. The share has been working sideways near the top of its own range, without falling out of it. THE OTHER WAY TO READ THIS The same chart supports a flatter reading, and it deserves to be put as strongly as the first. Strip out 22 September 2025 and what remains is a company repriced by one licence agreement and carried since by the liquidity that arrived with it. On that view the moving averages are describing the long tail of a single repricing rather than a trend, which is what a 200-day average does after a step, since it keeps rising for months on arithmetic alone. ADX at 14.6 fits that reading at least as well as it fits a pause. Every figure here is drawn from one price series, so the six measures are not six independent witnesses. Both readings fit the data, and the chart alone cannot separate them. 6.00 THE ENTITLEMENT OFFER STEP, AND A FEED ADJUSTMENT Two features of this price line are not the market changing its mind, and both fall in the last three months. On 15 July 2026 the company announced a fully underwritten entitlement offer at 57 cents a share, which completed on 11 August. [R3] New shares issued below the market price put a step in a price series, because each existing share now represents a slightly smaller slice. The offer document gives the last traded close as 76 cents and a theoretical ex-rights price of 73 cents, which is the size of that step as the company calculated it. This chart is drawn on raw traded prices, so the step is in it. The second is invisible unless you look for it. Price feeds handle a capital raising differently from one another, and the series behind these figures carried an adjustment on eight July sessions and on none of the others. Samso restated those eight to raw traded prices, which the company's own 76-cent figure confirms. 7.00 WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS READING Everything below can be seen on the chart itself, with no other document needed. A close above 83.0 cents would put the share outside its 20-day channel for the first time since early August, and would say the range resolved upward. A close below 69.5 cents would take out the floor of the last thirty-five sessions. ADX turning back above 25 while +DI stays above -DI would say the trend has found its conviction again. ADX falling further with the two directional lines converging would say the sideways stretch is settling in rather than pausing. The median volume is the measure underneath all of that. If it drifts back toward the 226,196 shares of the pre-September-2025 market, the liquidity that makes this chart readable goes with it, and every pattern on it gets less reliable. 8.00 SAMSO CONCLUDING COMMENTS The reader who said it looks like it is trending up is right on direction, and the measures back that reading. What the chart adds is proportion. One session in September 2025 did 26 per cent of the compounded move on 99.7 times normal volume, and it was an announcement rather than the market gradually deciding something. The twelve months since have been a genuine climb. The last seven weeks have not been a climb at all, and ADX at 14.6 is the measure putting a number on that. None of this says what happens next. Technical measures describe what a price has done, and the academic record on using them to predict has been mixed for decades. Starpharma's chart says the company was repriced in one morning and has been holding that gain since. ABOUT THE READING THE CHART SERIES Reading the Chart is where Samso analyses a company's share price and shows how the reading was arrived at, so a reader can run the same check on another stock. A Chart Read carries no Samso Call, and no entry, exit, stop, target or position size. An announcement is named only where the chart recorded it on that date. PREVIOUS SAMSO COVERAGE OF STARPHARMA A site search of samso.com.au on 19 September 2026 returned no piece on Starpharma and none on SPL. The same search returns Samso's published pieces on Race Oncology and EchoIQ, so the search itself works. This is Samso's first piece on the company, so there is no prior call, no prior figure and no earlier position to reconcile against. THE WORDS IN THIS PIECE, IN PLAIN ENGLISH Trading session. A day the exchange is open. There are about 254 in a year, so 120 sessions is roughly six months and 20 is roughly a month. Moving average. The average of the last n closing prices, recalculated each day. A 200-day moving average smooths out the daily noise and shows the longer path. Traders watch whether price is above or below it, and whether it is rising or falling. ADX, or Average Directional Index. J. Welles Wilder's measure of how strongly a price is trending, set out in New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems in 1978. It says nothing about direction. Above 25 is conventionally called trending and below 20 not trending. Those cut-offs are convention rather than a finding. +DI and -DI. Wilder's two companion lines to ADX. One measures the average upward movement between sessions, the other the downward. Whichever is higher is the way the daily movement leans. RSI, or Relative Strength Index. Wilder again, in the same 1978 book. It compares the size of recent gains to the size of recent losses on a scale of nought to 100. He suggested 70 as overbought and 30 as oversold. Those were suggestions rather than tested rules, and the record on acting on them is mixed. Donchian channel. The highest high and the lowest low over a set number of sessions, drawn as a band around the price. Named after Richard Donchian, a commodity trader active from the 1940s and one of the earliest systematic trend followers. Price closing outside the band is called a break. Median volume. The middle value of a run of daily volumes. Unlike an average, one enormous day cannot drag it, which makes it the fairer benchmark for asking whether a session was busy. Gap. An opening price away from the previous close, leaving a blank space on the chart. On a small company a large gap is almost always a response to something the company lodged. Logarithmic scale. An axis where each equal step is a tenfold increase rather than a fixed amount. It lets a 200,000-share day and a 21-million-share day share one chart and stay readable. Entitlement offer, and TERP. An offer of new shares to existing holders, usually at a discount. TERP, the theoretical ex-rights price, is the arithmetic price a share should be worth once those new shares exist. It is the size of the step the offer puts in the price series. References and sources Prices and the number of shares traded come from Yahoo Finance and cover every trading session from 18 September 2024 to 18 September 2026, which is 508 of them. Dates are the exchange's own, in Sydney time. Eight sessions in July 2026 arrived carrying a rights adjustment that the rest of the series did not, and Samso restated those eight to raw traded prices. The restated 14 July close of 75.5 cents is the company's own 76 cents at two decimals, and it is the only cum price that produces the 73-cent TERP the company published. Announcement titles and dates are quoted as they appear on the ASX market announcements platform for SPL, read on 19 September 2026. Every chart is an original Samso illustration of sourced data, and no company figure or diagram has been reproduced. Every percentage, median and multiple in the piece is Samso's own arithmetic on that price series, recomputed independently of the measurement script. [R1] ASX, Starpharma Holdings Limited (SPL) company page and market announcements, asx.com.au, read 19 September 2026. Source for the company name, the listing date of 28 September 2000, the industry group, shares on issue, and every announcement title and date quoted here. [R2] Yahoo Finance, daily price and volume bars for SPL.AX, 18 September 2024 to 18 September 2026, retrieved 19 September 2026. The price series behind every figure and behind the cover. [R3] Starpharma Holdings Limited, Fully Underwritten Entitlement Offer to Raise $32 Million, ASX announcement, 15 July 2026, and Successful Completion of $32 million Entitlement Offer, 11 August 2026. Source for the 57-cent offer price, the 76-cent last close and the 73-cent theoretical ex-rights price. [R4] Starpharma Holdings Limited, Starpharma Announces License Agreement with Genentech, ASX announcement lodged 6.50am, 22 September 2025. Named here only as the release the chart recorded on that date. [R5] J. Welles Wilder Jr, New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems, 1978. The origin of the Average Directional Index and the Relative Strength Index, and of the 25, 20, 70 and 30 levels quoted. [R6] Richard Donchian, on the channel that carries his name. Widely attributed rather than checked against a primary copy in this build. The 20-day and 55-day versions were put to systematic use by the Turtle traders, described in Curtis Faith, Way of the Turtle, 2007. [R7] Robert D. Edwards and John Magee, Technical Analysis of Stock Trends, 1948. Where the moving-average conventions used here entered the charting canon. Widely attributed. [R8] Listcorp, Starpharma Holdings Limited (ASX:SPL) share price history, listcorp.com, read 19 September 2026. Used to cross-check the last five sessions and the OTCQX line. The Samso Way – Seek the Research Here at Samso, we pride ourselves on delivering content for investors that is independent and informed by over three decades of experience in the industry. Our content is well-researched and is only created if I see merit in discussing the company's story. Our mission is simple. Cut through the noise and spotlight what matters. Genuine stories, grounded insights, and real opportunity. Investors can explore our four core platforms: Coffee with Samso Samso Insights Samso News Samso Research There may be numerous paths to success in investing, but the common thread among successful individuals is that they remain committed to making informed decisions. Equip yourself with the right knowledge and tools, and you will be well on your way to achieving your financial goals. Most importantly, investors need to be absolutely diligent in understanding their own risk-reward tolerance and capabilities. Never bite off more than you can chew. As they say, Rome wasn't built in a day, and the Great Wall stood because it took centuries to complete. The Samso Philosophy: Stay curious. Stay sharp. And remember, digging deeper always uncovers the real value. In Life, there is no such thing as a Free Lunch. Never bite off more than you can chew is my parting comment. Happy Investing, and the only four-letter word you need to know is DYOR. To support our independent work, please head over to our Support Page and give us a helping hand in any of the ways listed. This is a new initiative for the Samso Platform, and it was always the concept of Samso when we started this journey in 2018. Disclaimer The information or opinions provided herein do not constitute investment advice, an offer, or solicitation to subscribe for, purchase, or sell the investment product(s) mentioned herein. It does not take into consideration, nor have any regard to your specific investment objectives, financial situation, risk profile, tax position and particular, or unique needs and constraints. Read full Disclaimer. About Samso Samso is a trusted platform that equips dedicated investors with up-to-date industry knowledge and insights from top CEOs and thought leaders. By staying informed on business advancements and market trends, investors can enhance their financial decisions through a combination of expert guidance and their own research. Coffee with Samso, Samso Insights, Samso News and Samso Research are four ways into the same work. Interviews, long-form research, short takes on announcements and company-specific studies. Every one of them is about how to think about investing rather than what to buy. Samso News | www.samso.com.au | An Investor Lens on ASX-Listed Companies Samso News is independent research commentary for general information only. Nothing in this article is financial product advice, and it does not take into account any reader's objectives, financial situation or needs. Figures are drawn from public sources believed reliable at the stated dates but are not guaranteed. Market-sensitive numbers change daily. Samso or associated parties may hold positions in, or have commercial arrangements with, companies mentioned. Seek professional advice before making investment decisions. © Samso 2026 · samso.com.au

One session up 25.8 per cent on the heaviest volume since July, and the session after it traded A$195. Whether that is a turn depends on the window you measure over. On Friday 18 September 2026 Vantage Metals closed at A$0.039, up 25.8 per cent on the day. On the chart that shows as one tall jump at the right-hand edge of a long falling line. A reader seeing it would reasonably say the stock is turning up. This piece tests that idea against the chart and nothing else. Vantage Metals traded as Belararox under the code BRX until July 2026 [R2], so anyone searching the old code is looking at the same price history. Every figure is as at the close of Monday 21 September 2026, from the daily trading record for VAN since listing, checked against the ASX company page for VAN [R1]. Will Dix is presenting Vantage Metals and its large-scale copper projects in Botswana and Argentina. That is what brought the chart to the desk. It is not what this piece is about. This is a Samso Chart Read. Samso takes the share price on its own terms, states each measure with the window it is taken over, explains what the measure is, and says what would make the reading wrong. There is no Samso Call in a Chart Read, and no entry, exit, target or position size. Samso does not tell anyone where to trade a price. All prices in this piece are as at the close of ASX trading on 21 September 2026. HOW TO USE THIS PIECE Every technical term is explained in plain English where it first appears, and all of them are collected again in the vocabulary box at the back. TABLE 01 in section 3.00 puts every measure in one place with what it reads. The bracketed numbers, like [R4], are sources. The reference list at the end names the document behind each one, so any figure here can be checked against the record it came from. 1.00 THE FIRST IMPRESSION. A 97 Per Cent Fall, Then One Sharp Jump FIGURE 01 plots the closing price, meaning the last price the shares traded at, for every trading day since the company listed in January 2022 [R4]. The line falls a long way. The highest close in the record is A$1.45 on 23 March 2022, and A$0.039 is 97.3 per cent below that. At the very end of the line there is one sharp jump upward. 2.00 THE TWO SESSIONS. The 18 September Jump and the Session After It On 18 September the stock opened at A$0.033, traded between A$0.033 and A$0.039, and finished at A$0.039. That was a rise of 0.8 of a cent on a previous close of A$0.031. Traders read a finish at the top of the day's range as buying interest holding up, though the ASX sets the close by auction rather than by the last trade. The next session tests that reading. On Monday 21 September the stock traded 5,000 shares and closed unchanged at A$0.039, about A$195 of stock changing hands. The fortnight before the jump also changes how it reads. The stock closed at A$0.039 on 4 September and fell in every session to A$0.030 by 14 September, so the jump returned the price to where it sat ten trading days earlier and no higher. The returns say the same. Over five trading days the stock is up 30.0 per cent. Over twenty it is unchanged. The direction you report depends on the window you pick, which is why a claim about a trend needs its window stated. The ASX announcements record for VAN, read on 21 September 2026, shows nothing lodged since 14 September [R1]. Neither session followed a release. 3.00 THE MEASURES. Every Measure in One Place TABLE 01 sets out every measure the rest of this piece uses, what each one is in plain English, and what it reads at the close of 21 September 2026. The sections below take them one at a time and explain where each measure comes from. 4.00 THE MOVING AVERAGES. What the Moving Averages Say A moving average is the average of the closing prices over a set number of past days, recalculated daily. It smooths out the daily jumps so the underlying direction shows. A longer window moves more slowly. FIGURE 02 draws three of them against the price for the last 250 trading days. The 10-day exponential moving average sits at A$0.0350, and the price is 11.5 per cent above it. Exponential means recent days count for more than older ones, so the line reacts fast. The 50-day simple average, where every day counts equally, sits at A$0.0369, and the price is 5.6 per cent above it. That line has almost stopped falling, down 1.0 per cent over the last twenty sessions. The 200-day simple average sits at A$0.0629. The price is 38.0 per cent below it, and that line is still falling, 7.4 per cent lower than twenty trading days ago. Those three measure different lengths of time, which is why they disagree. The 200-day average is the line most professional traders use to separate a rising market from a falling one, a convention that goes back to Robert D. Edwards and John Magee in Technical Analysis of Stock Trends, 1948, the book that set down most of the charting practice still in use [R8]. On that measure nothing about Vantage Metals has changed. 5.00 THE MOMENTUM MEASURES. What the Momentum Measures Say Momentum measures ask how hard a price is being pushed rather than where it sits. MACD, moving average convergence divergence, tracks the gap between a 12-day and a 26-day moving average, then compares that gap with a nine-day average of itself called the signal line. Above the signal line, short-term pressure is improving. Below zero, the shorter average is still under the longer one. It was devised by the American money manager Gerald Appel, in his booklet The Moving Average Convergence-Divergence Trading Method [R7], for which no first publication year is verified. FIGURE 03 shows MACD at -0.00104 against a signal line of -0.00127. It crossed above its signal line on 21 September, its first session above, and it remains below zero, where it has now been for ten sessions. It crossed on 5,000 shares. A measure built from averages of the closing price moves on a close whether or not anybody traded at it. ADX, the average directional index, measures how strong a price trend is without saying which way it points. Direction comes from two companion lines, +DI for upward pressure and -DI for downward. The measure comes from J. Welles Wilder's New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems of 1978 [R6], the book that also gave the market the relative strength index. The convention that a reading above 25 marks a trend is later market practice, not Wilder's own. FIGURE 04 shows ADX at 23.06, with +DI at 48.49 against -DI at 35.22. Recent pressure points upward and the strength reading sits below 25, where it has been for 43 trading days. Traders call that a range, meaning a price drifting sideways between rough limits. 6.00 THE TURNOVER. How Much Stock Actually Changed Hands Volume is the number of shares traded. Turnover is the dollar value of them, and turnover is the more useful of the two here, because a large number of very cheap shares is still a small amount of money. FIGURE 05 plots daily volume for the last 120 trading days with the 20-day median across it. The median is the middle value of a set, a fairer guide than an average, which one heavy day drags upward. The 18 September session traded 892,564 shares, the most in any session since 7 July 2026, and 21.5 times the median of the 20 sessions before it. The session after it traded 5,000 shares, which is 0.12 times that same median. The size of that base is what needs care. Median daily turnover across the last 20 sessions was A$1,544, and two of the 20 had no trades at all. At 60 sessions the median is A$4,000, with seven no-trade days. At the closing price the 18 September session turned over about A$34,810 and the session after it about A$195, both Samso's own arithmetic of closing price times volume. Twenty-one times a very small number is still a small number. That does not make the move false. It does mean the multiple carries less weight than it first appears. 7.00 THE PRICE RECORD. Price Steps and No-Trade Days The ASX sets the smallest amount a price can move, and it varies by price band. That amount is called the price step, or tick. Under 10 cents it is 0.1 of a cent [R5]. At A$0.031 one step is 3.2 per cent of the price, and the whole 18 September move was eight steps. A percentage change that looks large can be a handful of the smallest available increments. When no shares trade, the ASX carries the previous price forward. Eleven of the last 120 sessions show zero volume and an unchanged close. The flat stretches in FIGURE 01 and FIGURE 05 are an absence of trading, not a price holding steady. THE OTHER WAY TO READ THIS A stock that has stopped falling often looks like this at the start. The 18 September session finished at the top of its range on the heaviest volume since 7 July, the 50-day average has almost stopped falling, and MACD has now crossed above its signal line. The quiet session that followed settles nothing either way, because one slow day after a jump is ordinary. What would settle it is turnover. 8.00 WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS READING. Turnover, A$0.045 and the 200-Day Average Each of the three is visible on the chart and needs no company information. Turnover that stays. Three or four consecutive sessions above roughly A$50,000 would say a different set of people is trading the stock. The first session after the jump came in at A$195. A close above A$0.045. That is the highest the stock has traded on any day in the last 55 sessions, a level called the upper Donchian channel, after Richard Donchian, the commodity trader who was among the first, from the 1940s onwards, to trade to a written set of rules [R9]. Clearing it on real volume would be the first thing here to look like a breakout, meaning a move out of the range rather than a bounce inside it. The 200-day average levelling off. It is falling at 7.4 per cent over twenty sessions. A flat or rising 200-day line is what turns a short move into a trend. 9.00 SAMSO CONCLUDING COMMENTS. What the Vantage Metals (ASX: VAN) Chart Supports Vantage Metals is trading in a range near the bottom of its twelve-month span of A$0.030 to A$0.150. The short-term measures have improved and the long-term measures have not moved. The 18 September session is real and it finished strongly. It also recovered ten sessions of lost ground and went no further. Someone calling this chart an uptrend has read the last week accurately. The same chart over the last year does not support that description. Both readings sit in the one picture, which is why the window has to be stated whenever anyone describes a trend. Vantage Metals is an exploration company with drilling under way, per its announcement Drilling Commences at the Kalahari Copper Project, 23 July 2026 [R3]. What that drilling produces is outside what a chart can say. SAMSO TAKE The measure that decides this chart is turnover. MACD crossed above its signal line on a day when A$195 of stock changed hands, and the median session over the last twenty traded A$1,544. Most of the indicators on this page are computed over a market that barely traded. Will enough stock change hands to make any of them mean anything? THE WORDS IN THIS PIECE, IN PLAIN ENGLISH Closing price. The last price the shares traded at that day. On the ASX it is set by an auction after normal trading ends, not simply by the final trade. Trading day, or session. A day the exchange is open. There are about 254 in a year, so 120 trading days is roughly six months and 20 is roughly a month. Moving average. The average closing price over a set number of past days, worked out again each day. It smooths out the daily noise so the direction underneath shows. Reading the 50-day and the 200-day as the divide between a rising and a falling market is a convention that goes back to Robert D. Edwards and John Magee, Technical Analysis of Stock Trends, 1948, the book that set down most of the charting practice still in use. Exponential moving average. A moving average that counts recent days for more than older ones, so it turns faster than a simple average of the same length. MACD. Short for moving average convergence divergence. The gap between a 12-day and a 26-day moving average, compared with a nine-day average of itself called the signal line. A measure of momentum rather than of value. Devised by the American money manager Gerald Appel, in his booklet The Moving Average Convergence-Divergence Trading Method. The copies in circulation are reprints and Samso has not verified a first publication year. ADX, or Average Directional Index. A measure of how strong a price trend is rather than which way it points, from J. Welles Wilder, New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems, 1978. That one book also gave the market the relative strength index and the average true range, which is why the name is worth knowing. The convention that above 25 is a trend and below 20 is no trend came later and is not Wilder's own. +DI and -DI. The two companion lines to ADX, also Wilder's. +DI measures upward pressure and -DI downward. Whichever is higher is the direction the recent pressure points. Range. A price drifting sideways between rough limits rather than travelling in one direction. Breakout. A price pushing clear of the range it has been drifting in, usually on heavier trading than normal, which traders read as the start of a move. Volume. The number of shares that changed hands in a day. Turnover, or value traded. The dollar value of the shares that changed hands, being the number of shares multiplied by the price. On a very cheap share it describes how real a market is far better than the share count on its own. Median. The middle value once every day in a window is lined up in order. It describes an ordinary day better than an average, which one very busy day can drag upwards. Price step, or tick. The smallest amount a price can move. The ASX sets it by price band, and below 10 cents it is one tenth of a cent. Donchian channel. The highest high and the lowest low over a set number of past days, drawn as two lines, with a close above the upper line read as a breakout. Named for Richard Donchian, a commodity trader who from the 1940s was among the first to trade a written set of rules rather than a view. References and sources Prices and the number of shares traded cover every trading day from 27 January 2022, the company's first day of quotation, to 21 September 2026, which is 1,176 of them. Dates are the exchange's own, in Sydney time. The last price, the day's change, the volume, the shares on issue and the 52-week range were cross-checked against the ASX company page for VAN on 21 September 2026 and match. No bar was taken on the day it traded. The adjusted close equals the close on all 1,176 bars and the corporate-action record is empty, so there is no consolidation, split or dividend in the window and nothing in the price line has been restated. The company traded as Belararox Limited under the code BRX until July 2026 and the price record is continuous across the change. Every chart is an original Samso illustration of sourced data, and no company figure or diagram has been reproduced. Every percentage, median and dollar figure in the piece is Samso's own arithmetic on that price series. The price steps are from the ASX. Market-sensitive figures are stated as at the close of 21 September 2026 and change daily. The bracketed numbers through the piece point to the entries below, so any claim can be traced to the document behind it. [R1] ASX, Vantage Metals Limited (VAN) company page and market announcements, asx.com.au, read 21 September 2026. Source for the company name, the listing date of 28 January 2022, shares on issue, the 52-week range, and the announcement titles and dates quoted in the piece. [R2] ASX, Change of ASX name and ticker code, Vantage Metals Ltd, lodged 13 July 2026 under the code BRX. Source for the change of name from Belararox Limited and of code from BRX to VAN. [R3] ASX, Drilling Commences at the Kalahari Copper Project, 23 July 2026. The only company announcement cited in the piece, and only to state what stage the company is at. [R4] Daily price and volume bars for VAN, 27 January 2022 to 21 September 2026, 1,176 trading days, retrieved 21 September 2026. The price series behind every figure and the cover. [R5] ASX, Australian equities trading, asx.com.au, read 19 September 2026. Source for the minimum price steps: 0.1 cent up to 10 cents, 0.5 cent from 10 cents to $2.00, and 1 cent at $2.00 and above. [R6] J. Welles Wilder Jr, New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems, 1978. The origin of the Average Directional Index, its two directional lines, the relative strength index and the average true range. [R7] Gerald Appel, The Moving Average Convergence-Divergence Trading Method. The origin of MACD. The copies in circulation are later reprints and no first publication year has been verified for this build. [R8] Robert D. Edwards and John Magee, Technical Analysis of Stock Trends, 1948. Where the moving-average conventions used here entered the charting canon. [R9] Curtis Faith, Way of the Turtle, 2007. The published account of the Donchian channel in a rule-based trading system. The Samso Way – Seek the Research Here at Samso, we pride ourselves on delivering content for investors that is independent and informed by over three decades of experience in the industry. Our content is well-researched and is only created if I see merit in discussing the company's story. Our mission is simple. Cut through the noise and spotlight what matters. Genuine stories, grounded insights, and real opportunity. Investors can explore our four core platforms: Coffee with Samso Samso Insights Samso News Samso Research There may be numerous paths to success in investing, but the common thread among successful individuals is that they remain committed to making informed decisions. Equip yourself with the right knowledge and tools, and you will be well on your way to achieving your financial goals. Most importantly, investors need to be absolutely diligent in understanding their own risk-reward tolerance and capabilities. Never bite off more than you can chew. As they say, Rome wasn't built in a day, and the Great Wall stood because it took centuries to complete. The Samso Philosophy: Stay curious. Stay sharp. And remember, digging deeper always uncovers the real value. In Life, there is no such thing as a Free Lunch. Never bite off more than you can chew is my parting comment. Happy Investing, and the only four-letter word you need to know is DYOR. To support our independent work, please head over to our Support Page and give us a helping hand in any of the ways listed. This is a new initiative for the Samso Platform, and it was always the concept of Samso when we started this journey in 2018. Disclaimer The information or opinions provided herein do not constitute investment advice, an offer, or solicitation to subscribe for, purchase, or sell the investment product(s) mentioned herein. It does not take into consideration, nor have any regard to your specific investment objectives, financial situation, risk profile, tax position and particular, or unique needs and constraints. Read full Disclaimer. About Samso Samso is a trusted platform that equips dedicated investors with up-to-date industry knowledge and insights from top CEOs and thought leaders. By staying informed on business advancements and market trends, investors can enhance their financial decisions through a combination of expert guidance and their own research. Coffee with Samso, Samso Insights, Samso News and Samso Research are four ways into the same work. Interviews, long-form research, short takes on announcements and company-specific studies. Every one of them is about how to think about investing rather than what to buy. Samso News | www.samso.com.au | An Investor Lens on ASX-Listed Companies Samso News is independent research commentary for general information only. Nothing in this article is financial product advice, and it does not take into account any reader's objectives, financial situation or needs. Figures are drawn from public sources believed reliable at the stated dates but are not guaranteed. Market-sensitive numbers change daily. Samso or associated parties may hold positions in, or have commercial arrangements with, companies mentioned. Seek professional advice before making investment decisions. © Samso 2026 · samso.com.au

Critical Metals Corp says Greenland approved the mining plan for its Tanbreez rare earth project on 29 September 2026. This Insight sets out what was approved, where the other Greenland rare earths deposits are, how European Lithium (ASX: EUR) shareholders came to hold part of Tanbreez, and what Conico (ASX: CNJ) holds on the east coast. Samso holds Conico shares. Greenland has several large rare earth deposits and produces no rare earths today. Tanbreez, owned by Critical Metals Corp (NASDAQ: CRML), has a mining licence and, its owner says, an approved mining plan. Kvanefjeld, far larger, has been refused a licence. Sarfartoq changed hands in September 2026. Two ASX-listed companies are part of this Greenland rare earths account. European Lithium (ASX: EUR) holds part of Tanbreez and its shareholders vote on a takeover on 22 October 2026. Conico (ASX: CNJ) holds exploration ground on the east coast and has applied for a rare earth licence there. WHAT THIS PIECE COVERS 1.00 THE TANBREEZ APPROVAL What Critical Metals says Greenland signed on 29 September 2026, and what is still needed before construction. 2.00 WHERE THE RARE EARTHS ARE The known deposits and occurrences across Greenland, from the geological survey. 3.00 THE TANBREEZ DEPOSIT The rock, the mineral that carries the metal, and the published resource. 4.00 THE TANBREEZ STUDY AND PROCESSING The 2025 economic assessment, the test work since, the offtake and the funding. 5.00 KVANEFJELD The larger neighbour, the 2021 uranium law and the court cases. 6.00 SARFARTOQ AND THE OTHER GROUND The remaining deposits and who holds them. 7.00 WHY GOVERNMENTS ARE INVOLVED China's export controls, prices, and the agreements signed with Greenland. 8.00 EUROPEAN LITHIUM AND CRITICAL METALS How an ASX company came to hold part of Tanbreez, and the takeover vote on 22 October 2026. 9.00 CONICO IN GREENLAND What Conico holds, what it has drilled and what its rare earth application covers. 10.00 THE CASE AGAINST Why very few mines have been built in Greenland. 11.00 SAMSO VIEW What Samso takes from the record. DISCLOSURE Samso Pty Ltd is a shareholder in Conico Limited (ASX: CNJ), one of the companies discussed in this article. A NOTE ON THE VOCABULARY AND THE SOURCES Mining and corporate terms are explained in plain English where they first appear. They are also collected in one box at the back, above the references. Each source has an identifier, [R1] to [R53]. The same identifier appears in the text at the point the source is used, and it links to the entry in the reference list. Where two documents from the same company give different figures for the same thing, this article quotes both as published and names the document each came from. It does not attempt to resolve them. Where Samso does the arithmetic, the article says so and shows the working. Where Samso reasons beyond what a company has said, the article labels it a theoretical model. 1.00 — THE TANBREEZ APPROVAL The Tanbreez approval Critical Metals announced on 5 October 2026 Rare earths are a group of 17 metals used in magnets, electronics and defence equipment. Tanbreez is a rare earth project in South Greenland, between the towns of Narsaq and Qaqortoq. FIG. 01 shows the location. Its owner is Critical Metals Corp (NASDAQ: CRML), a company listed in New York [R1]. On 5 October 2026 Critical Metals announced that the Government of Greenland had approved two documents for Tanbreez, the Mining Plan and the Closure Plan [R1]. A mining plan sets out how the mine, the processing plant, the port and the supporting infrastructure will be built and run. A closure plan sets out how the site will be shut and rehabilitated at the end. The company says the approval was signed in Nuuk on 29 September 2026 by Múte B. Egede, Greenland's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Business and Mineral Resources. It was given under sections 77 and 80 of Greenland's Mineral Activities Act and under licence MIN 2020-54. It runs to 8 September 2050 and names 19 elements, including the rare earths, zirconium, hafnium, tantalum and niobium [R1]. The chairman and chief executive of Critical Metals, Tony Sage, said in the release that the approval "is a defining milestone for Tanbreez and for Critical Metals Corp" [R1]. The trade press reports of 5 and 6 October repeat the company's details and name no government document [R2] [R3]. The approval is therefore described here as the company has announced it. What the approval allows, and what it leaves open The approval is one step in a sequence. Construction of the mine cannot start on it alone. Critical Metals says it still needs operating permits for specific activities under sections 120 and 121 of the same Act. Those cover environmental management, marine transport, health and safety, and the export and sale of minerals. It also has to lodge a financial security, which is money or a guarantee set aside to pay for closing the site [R1]. Tanbreez already held an exploitation licence, which is the right to mine. An exploration licence only gives the right to look. The exploitation licence covers about 18 square kilometres, runs for 30 years and was granted in 2020. The scheme booklet says the project is licensed for 500,000 tonnes a year [R9]. The technical report describes that as eudialyte material, within total mining of 2.5 million tonnes a year [R6]. The royalty, which is the share of sales paid to the government, is 5 per cent on rare earths and 2.5 per cent on other minerals [R9]. WHAT EUDIALYTE IS Eudialyte is the mineral that carries the rare earths at Tanbreez. It is a rare and complex silicate mineral. It holds zirconium, sodium, calcium, iron, manganese and the rare earth elements [R6]. It forms in peralkaline igneous rocks. These are rocks that cooled from molten material unusually rich in sodium and potassium. Kakortokite, the layered rock at Tanbreez, is one of them. Eudialyte is known for its red to pink colour [R6]. At Tanbreez the black and white layers of the kakortokite are a little less than 10 per cent eudialyte by volume. The pink layers are around 30 to 40 per cent [R6]. The licence sets two deadlines. The first is for the financial security and a company guarantee. The second is for the start of mining. The company's annual report for the year to 30 June 2026 gives different dates for both in two places [R7]. One passage gives 31 December 2026 for the security and guarantee, and 30 June 2029 for the start of mining. Another passage gives 31 March 2027 and 30 September 2029. The company's stated targets are first ore in the December quarter of 2028 or the March quarter of 2029, and first exports of concentrate by the September quarter of 2029 [R33]. A feasibility study, which is the detailed engineering and cost study a lender normally asks for, is now due by the middle of 2027 [R7]. 2.00 — WHERE THE RARE EARTHS ARE Greenland's rare earth deposits on one map Greenland is the largest island in the world and most of it is under ice. The rock is exposed in a strip around the coast. The Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, known as GEUS, has mapped the known rare earth deposits and occurrences in that strip. FIG. 02 reproduces the survey's map [R17]. A deposit is rock that has been drilled and measured. An occurrence is a place where the metal has been found in samples and the size is unknown. On the survey's map the main deposits are Kvanefjeld, Kringlerne, Motzfeldt, Sarfartoq and Milne Land. The map also marks Appat, a small body in the same complex as Kvanefjeld. Kringlerne is the geological name for Tanbreez. Its Greenlandic name is Killavaat Alannguat [R17]. Most of them are in the far south, in an area geologists call the Gardar Province. It is a belt of ancient igneous rocks, meaning rocks that cooled from molten material. Kvanefjeld and Tanbreez are at opposite ends of the same complex, the Ilímaussaq complex. Kvanefjeld is north of the town of Narsaq and Tanbreez is about 8 kilometres south of it [R17]. How much rare earth Greenland holds Rare earth content is measured as rare earth oxide, which is the metal combined with oxygen and is the form it is sold in. A tonne of oxide holds a little less than a tonne of metal. The United States Geological Survey, the USGS, lists Greenland's rare earth reserves at 1.5 million tonnes of rare earth oxide. Reserves in the USGS sense are the part judged workable today. The USGS also records that Greenland produces no rare earths. FIG. 03 sets that figure beside the larger countries [R19]. GEUS measures something wider. It adds up every published figure, whatever standard it was prepared to. Its 2023 report puts the total at 36.1 million tonnes of rare earth elements, which it says is about 42 million tonnes of rare earth oxide [R17]. About two thirds of that total is one line. It is a company figure of 4,300 million tonnes for the whole Tanbreez rock unit, which GEUS marks as "Historical, non-compliant" [R17]. That means it was not prepared to a current reporting code. The drilled Tanbreez resource is far smaller, as section 3.00 shows. The GEUS report says most of the estimates it adds up are of this historical kind and carry large uncertainties. 3.00 — THE TANBREEZ DEPOSIT The Tanbreez deposit, a layered rock and a mineral called eudialyte The rock at Tanbreez is called kakortokite. It formed in layers at the bottom of the Ilímaussaq complex about 1.16 billion years ago [R6]. The layers are visible from the fjord as black, red and white bands [R5]. PLATE 01 shows the hillside. The red bands are rich in a mineral called eudialyte. Eudialyte carries the rare earths, along with zirconium, niobium and tantalum. The company's technical report says the rock is about 20 per cent eudialyte, 40 per cent feldspar and 40 per cent of a black mineral called arfvedsonite [R6]. PLATE 02 shows eudialyte in drill core. FIG. 04 is the geological map of the complex. The kakortokite is the blue unit at the southern end. The two areas with a published resource are marked Fjord and Hill [R5]. The Tanbreez Mineral Resource A Mineral Resource is an estimate of how much mineralised rock is in the ground and at what grade. Grade is the share of the rock that is the metal of interest. In Australia the estimate is reported under the JORC Code, the rule book written by the Joint Ore Reserves Committee. Indicated means the drilling is close enough to plan a mine on. Inferred means the drilling is wider apart and the estimate is less certain. European Lithium (ASX: EUR), which owns part of Tanbreez and part of Critical Metals, published the JORC resource on 13 March 2025. Table 01 sets it out [R5]. The March 2025 statement gives the same rock 1.39 per cent zirconium oxide and 0.14 per cent niobium oxide [R5]. A cut-off grade is the grade below which rock is left out of an estimate. The March 2025 announcement says no cut-off was applied [R5]. The amended technical report of April 2026 reports the same tonnes and grade above a cut-off of 0.30 per cent [R6]. Both are quoted as published. The March 2025 technical report says the estimate rests on 184 drill holes, 6,431.8 metres in total, drilled from 2007 to 2013. It was first prepared in 2016 and the report says there has been no updated estimate since [R6]. The scheme booklet gives about 200 holes and about 43,000 metres, drilled from 2007 to 2015 [R9]. Both are quoted as published. PLATE 03 shows one of those rigs. A further 33 holes, 4,579.5 metres in total, were drilled in 2024 and 2025. The amended report says they were designed to confirm the earlier results [R6]. Most of the older holes were not assayed for every rare earth. The announcement says the rare earth grade for the earlier drilling was estimated from the zirconium grade, using a relationship measured in the 2013 holes [R5]. The scheme booklet includes a report by an independent technical specialist, Valuation and Resource Management Pty Ltd, or VRM. VRM "questions the use of proxy assay data to estimate assays where none exist". It recommends an independent audit or review of the estimate [R9]. Light and heavy rare earths The rare earths are split into light and heavy. The light ones, such as neodymium and praseodymium, are the main ingredients of permanent magnets. The heavy ones, such as dysprosium and terbium, are added in small amounts so the magnet keeps its strength when it gets hot. The heavy ones are scarcer and sell for more. Samso's research workup on Australian Rare Earths Limited (ASX: AR3) covers the same split in an Australian clay deposit. The company's annual report says heavy rare earths are about 27 per cent of the rare earth content at Tanbreez. The same report also says about 28 per cent, and says that figure includes yttrium [R7]. Yttrium is a lower-priced metal that is counted with the heavy group. The amended technical report lists each oxide for each part of the resource. For the Indicated part of the Fjord area, yttrium oxide is 691 parts per million. Dysprosium and terbium oxides together are 144 [R6]. Samso added the fifteen oxides in that row and got about 4,467. On that arithmetic yttrium is about 15 per cent of the rare earth oxide in that block, and dysprosium and terbium together are about 3 per cent. The same table gives the heavy share, yttrium included, as between about 22 and 27 per cent. It prints 0.00 for the Inferred part of the Fjord area. The company's technical report puts uranium in the rock at 10 to 20 parts per million [R6]. A part per million is one gram in a tonne. VRM says the uranium assays from the resource drilling "are not well disclosed" and that it "is unable to confirm this statement". It adds that published uranium results from the 2025 drilling were below 100 parts per million [R9]. The uranium level decides whether a project can be licensed in Greenland at all, as section 5.00 explains. How large Tanbreez is, in tonnes of rare earth oxide Tanbreez is often described as one of the largest rare earth deposits in the world. CSIS, a Washington research institute on strategy and international affairs, wrote in January 2026 that Tanbreez is "potentially the world's largest, at 28.2 million metric tons" [R4]. The published resource is smaller than that figure. Samso multiplied the 44.9 million tonnes of rock by the 0.38 per cent grade. The answer is about 171,000 tonnes of rare earth oxide. That is Samso's arithmetic on the company's numbers. It is oxide in the ground, before any loss in mining or processing, and 19.5 of the 44.9 million tonnes is in the Inferred category. The March 2025 technical report mentions 4.7 billion tonnes of kakortokite across the whole unit. It describes that figure as conceptual and says it is not reported as a mineral resource. The amended report of April 2026 says over 4 billion tonnes [R6]. The drilled resource covers a small part of the unit. The company's March 2026 release set a target of growing the resource from 45 million tonnes to about 130 million tonnes [R33]. The company announced the start of a 10,000-metre drilling campaign on 17 June 2026 [R41]. The 130 million tonnes is a target. Samso found no new estimate in the company's filings to 2 October 2026. 4.00 — THE TANBREEZ STUDY AND PROCESSING What the 2025 Tanbreez study says, and what has changed since In March 2025 Critical Metals published a preliminary economic assessment, or PEA, for Tanbreez. A PEA is the earliest and least certain type of mining study. It tests whether a project could make money on broad assumptions. The study gives a net present value after tax of US$2.1 billion to US$2.7 billion [R8]. Net present value, or NPV, is the total of the project's future cash flows, marked down to today's money. The mark-down rate is called the discount rate. The lower figure uses 15 per cent and the higher uses 12.5 per cent. The trade press quotes the lower one [R2]. The study assumes a mine life of 25 years. These figures are for 100 per cent of the project. The study values the product, a eudialyte concentrate, at about US$690 a tonne for the Fjord area. Zirconium oxide is 55 per cent of that value, niobium oxide 12 per cent and rare earth oxides 32 per cent. The study covers a quarry, a crusher, magnetic separation and a port. It says no chemicals are used on site, so it does not include a chemical plant [R8]. Tanbreez has no Ore Reserve. An Ore Reserve is the part of a resource that a detailed study has shown can be mined at a profit. The PEA says the work is not yet sufficient to support one, and that 57 per cent of planned production from the Fjord area comes from Inferred material. Across both areas the figure is 39 per cent. The study made its mine plan by taking 90 per cent of the Indicated tonnes and 75 per cent of the Inferred tonnes [R8]. The study's schedule rises in stages to 12.5 million tonnes of rock a year, of which 2.5 million tonnes is eudialyte ore. It gives the 25-year total as 37.5 million tonnes of eudialyte ore [R8]. The resource is 44.9 million tonnes of rock and the licence rate is 500,000 tonnes a year. These figures are quoted as published. VRM, the independent specialist in the scheme booklet, reviewed the study. It wrote that it "does not consider the PEA an appropriate study for assessing the value of the project". It also said the study counts revenue from feldspar and arfvedsonite, and that those "are not minerals permitted to be exploited under the terms of the licence" [R9]. The capital cost is given two ways. The PEA report gives US$150 million for the mine, the processing plant and the port, and US$295 million over the life of the mine [R8]. The company's June 2025 release gives US$290 million to reach initial commercial production [R16]. Both are quoted as published. The company has since moved on from the processing route in the study. The annual report says the PEA "does not represent the Company's current contemplated processing flowsheet". It also says the current technical report "does not constitute an Initial Assessment, pre-feasibility study or feasibility study" [R7]. A flowsheet is the sequence of processing steps from rock to product. No feasibility study has been published. The technical report refers to a study completed in 2014, when the project was privately owned [R6]. The resource announcement dates a study to 2016 and says it was not published [R5]. Both are quoted as published. The scheme booklet says 709 tonnes of bulk samples were tested through a pilot plant [R9]. What the 85,000 tonnes a year refers to The company says Tanbreez will start at about 85,000 tonnes a year and could expand to about 425,000 tonnes. Its documents describe that number in different ways. The March 2025 release calls it rare earth oxide [R50]. The June 2025 release calls it "rare earth material" [R16]. The trade press calls it throughput [R3]. The next paragraph is Samso's reasoning, a theoretical model built on the published numbers. The company has not made this statement. The whole resource holds about 171,000 tonnes of rare earth oxide on Samso's arithmetic in section 3.00. Production of 85,000 tonnes of oxide a year would use that in two years, and the study plans for 25. The PEA mine schedule shows 50,000 to 100,000 tonnes of eudialyte ore a year in the first phase [R8]. On those numbers the 85,000 tonnes reads as tonnes of ore or concentrate, and not as tonnes of rare earth oxide. The company has not said which it is. Getting the rare earths out of eudialyte GEUS says most of the world's rare earth production has come from two minerals, bastnäsite and monazite, with minor amounts from loparite, xenotime and clays [R17]. The USGS notes that heavy rare earths are elevated in some of those clays [R19]. Eudialyte is a different mineral. The company's annual report says its processing flowsheet "remains conceptual and has not been validated at a commercial scale" [R7]. The first step is physical. Eudialyte is weakly magnetic, so magnets can separate it from the other minerals. The technical report says this lifts the grade by a factor of about three. The product is a concentrate, which the report says "will be shipped to a chemical treatment plant in the USA or Europe" [R6]. In March 2026 the company reported new results for this magnetic step. The tests were run at a Perth laboratory on a sample kept from the 2016 study. The release reports a concentrate of 2.96 per cent rare earth oxide and "better than 85% deportment recovery" [R14]. Recovery is the share of the metal in the rock that ends up in the product. The amended technical report of April 2026 assumes recoveries of 50 to 65 per cent [R6]. Both are quoted as published. In the same March release the chairman, Tony Sage, said the flowsheet in the PEA "is now obsolete". The release said pilot plant operations were scheduled to start in May 2026 [R14]. A pilot plant is the next scale of testing after the laboratory. The company announced on 7 January 2026 that it had approved the start of construction of pilot plant and other facilities in Qaqortoq [R53]. The trade press reported that the company said in June 2026 that footings were under way for a pilot plant headquarters [R2]. The second step is chemical. When eudialyte is dissolved in acid, the silica in it can turn into a gel. A September 2026 release describes a reactor design intended to prevent that. Its headline claims more than 99 per cent dissolution of the concentrate. The body of the release gives no laboratory, sample size or test conditions for that figure, and describes its numbers as current modelling, "subject to further test work and process validation" [R13]. The same release describes a possible refinery in Romania to treat up to 100,000 tonnes of concentrate a year. The capital estimate is US$1.85 billion, give or take 25 per cent. The model assumes the concentrate is worth about US$4,000 a tonne [R13]. The PEA used about US$690 a tonne and a capital cost of US$150 million for a mine with no chemical plant [R8]. The two documents describe different scopes and are quoted as published. Offtake and funding An offtake agreement is a contract to buy a mine's product, often signed before the mine is built. Critical Metals has one binding offtake. It is a 15-year agreement announced on 21 May 2026 with REalloys (NASDAQ: ALOY), covering 15 per cent of the concentrate [R15]. The annual report says there is no other definitive offtake [R7]. The arrangements the company has announced with parties in Romania and Saudi Arabia are described in its releases as term sheets [R49]. Table 02 lists them. In June 2025 the Export-Import Bank of the United States, a government lender, sent a letter of interest for a loan of up to US$120 million. The annual report calls the letter non-binding, meaning it commits no money [R7] [R16]. The annual report says that letter expired on 14 June 2026 and that an application to renew it is in progress [R7]. Critical Metals held US$102.5 million in cash at 30 June 2026 and reported a loss after tax of US$228.2 million for the year. The annual report also says "Substantial doubt exists about our ability to continue as a going concern" [R7]. A going concern is a business that can keep operating. The wording means there is a real question over whether the company can fund itself without raising more money. 5.00 — KVANEFJELD Kvanefjeld, the larger deposit next door, and the uranium law Kvanefjeld is in the same complex as Tanbreez, north of the town of Narsaq, and it is in a different rock. Its Greenlandic name is Kuannersuit. GEUS says most of its rare earths are in a mineral called steenstrupine, in a rock that also carries the uranium [R17]. It belongs to Energy Transition Minerals (ASX: ETM), a company formerly called Greenland Minerals. Kvanefjeld is far larger than Tanbreez on the published numbers. The owner's estimate, first published in February 2015 and recorded by GEUS, is 1,010 million tonnes of rock containing 11.14 million tonnes of rare earth oxide. It also contains 0.269 million tonnes of uranium oxide [R17] [R18]. The estimate was reported under the JORC Code above a cut-off of 150 parts per million of uranium oxide. It covers three zones, and the two smaller zones are Inferred only [R18]. FIG. 05 compares five published estimates in Greenland. The uranium is the reason Kvanefjeld has no mine. Greenland's Act No. 20 of 1 December 2021 bans mining where the resource contains more than 100 parts per million of uranium [R21]. The government's decision on Kvanefjeld cites about 300 parts per million in the ore [R20]. The 10 to 20 parts per million that the Tanbreez technical report gives is below that limit [R6]. CSIS wrote in January 2026 that Shenghe Resources, a Chinese rare earth company, "is the second largest shareholder in the Kvanefjeld mine" [R4]. On 1 June 2023 the government refused the application for an exploitation licence [R20]. The company took the dispute to arbitration, which is a private hearing before a panel instead of a court. The interim report refers to a partial award by the panel in October 2025 [R23]. The exploration licence expired on 31 December 2025. In June 2026 the government refused to renew it [R24]. The case is now before the High Court of Greenland. The company's update of 2 September 2026 says a hearing could be held "as early as autumn 2027 or the first half of 2028" [R22]. Energy Transition Minerals values Kvanefjeld at nil in its accounts, meaning its balance sheet gives the project no value [R23]. Its shares last traded at A$0.049 on the ASX data feed read on 7 October 2026. On 2,212.5 million shares that values the company at about A$108 million, which is Samso's arithmetic [R37]. 6.00 — SARFARTOQ AND THE OTHER GROUND Sarfartoq and the rest of Greenland's rare earth ground Sarfartoq is in West Greenland, about 60 kilometres from the international airport at Kangerlussuaq. It is a carbonatite, a rare type of igneous rock made mostly of carbonate minerals. Many of the world's rare earth mines are in carbonatites [R18]. Sarfartoq is small and high in grade. The estimate recorded by GEUS is 5.88 million tonnes Indicated at 1.77 per cent rare earth oxide and 2.46 million tonnes Inferred at 1.59 per cent. It was made in 2012 and 2013 under NI 43-101, the Canadian reporting code, above a cut-off of 1 per cent [R18]. The project changed hands on 1 September 2026. Greenland Mines (NASDAQ: GRML) bought the company that holds the licence from Neo Performance Materials and the other shareholders [R26]. Neo's release of May 2026 gave the price as US$35 million in cash and shares. It said Neo's subsidiary owned 43.69 per cent of the company being sold, and that Neo would keep a shareholding in Greenland Mines, and would negotiate an offtake agreement for up to 60 per cent of the output [R25]. Grønnedal is in the south-west and belongs to Eclipse Metals (ASX: EPM). On 29 April 2026 Eclipse reported a JORC resource of 208 million tonnes at 0.72 per cent rare earth oxide, above a cut-off of 0.2 per cent. Of that, 6 million tonnes is Indicated and 202 million tonnes is Inferred [R46]. Motzfeldt is in the south. Alba Mineral Resources, a London-listed company, completed the purchase of 25.5 per cent in October 2025 and said in March 2026 it was moving to 51 per cent [R47]. Alba changed its name to Arkadian Strategic Metals in June 2026. Its announcement of 20 May 2026 lists its Motzfeldt interest as 51 per cent [R51]. Table 03 lists the main rare earth ground in Greenland with the holder Samso could confirm. Mt means million tonnes. GEUS lists further occurrences with no resource. They include Qeqertaasaq and Tikiusaaq in the west, Niaqornakassak in the central west and Kap Simpson in the east. Milne Land in the east has a small estimate of 4 million tonnes at 0.6 to 1.2 per cent rare earth oxide [R17]. 7.00 — WHY GOVERNMENTS ARE INVOLVED China's export controls and the agreements with Greenland China holds 44 million tonnes of rare earth reserves on the USGS figures. The USGS puts the world total at more than 75 million tonnes [R19]. In April 2025 China put export controls on seven rare earths. The list was samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium and yttrium. Most of those are heavy rare earths. In October 2025 it added five more. In November 2025 the October controls were suspended for a year, and the April controls stayed [R19]. The USGS gives the average prices for 2025. Neodymium-praseodymium oxide, the main magnet material, averaged US$69 a kilogram. Dysprosium oxide averaged US$239 a kilogram and terbium oxide US$1,010 a kilogram [R19]. FIG. 06 sets the three side by side. The USGS heavy rare earth figures leave yttrium out [R19]. Dysprosium and terbium cost several times more for each kilogram than the light magnet metals, which is why the make-up of the heavy share of a deposit matters. In July 2025 the United States government agreed a price floor with MP Materials, the American rare earth miner. The government will make up the difference when the neodymium-praseodymium price is below US$110 a kilogram, for 10 years [R36]. The 2025 average of US$69 was below that floor. Samso's earlier Insight, China Is Slowing. The Money Went to What China Controls., covers China's export licensing in tungsten and other metals. What the agreements with Greenland say Greenland governs itself in most matters and is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. On 22 September 2026 the United States, Denmark and Greenland signed an agreement that updates the 1951 agreement on the defence of Greenland [R34]. The text mentions minerals once, in the opening recitals, where it acknowledges "minerals cooperation". It gives the United States no right to any deposit. Its relevant clause is Article X. It covers states and investors from countries that are not NATO members, NATO partners or European Union members. They may not hold control or significant influence in particularly sensitive sectors where that may threaten national security or public order, unless the parties agree. The agreement defines those sectors to include "the extraction of resources" [R34]. In June 2025 the European Commission named a graphite project as a Strategic Project. It mines in Greenland through Greenland Graphite a/s and processes in Norway through Norgraph a/s [R35]. 8.00 — EUROPEAN LITHIUM AND CRITICAL METALS How European Lithium came to hold part of Tanbreez European Lithium is a Perth company listed on the ASX. Its original project was Wolfsberg, a lithium deposit in Austria. In February 2024 it put Wolfsberg into a new company listed in New York, which became Critical Metals. European Lithium received 67.8 million Critical Metals shares in return [R9]. Tanbreez came later, from Rimbal Pty Ltd, a private Australian company owned by Gregory Barnes, which had held the project since 2001 [R9]. Table 04 sets out how it moved across. European Lithium therefore holds Tanbreez two ways. It owns 7.5 per cent of the project directly. It also owns 45.5 million Critical Metals shares, which is about 31 per cent of that company [R9]. European Lithium and Critical Metals share prices since January 2025 FIG. 07 shows both share prices from January 2025 [R37]. European Lithium closed at A$0.039 on 2 January 2025. It closed at A$0.42 on 6 October 2026. That is 10.8 times the starting price, on Samso's arithmetic. The closing low in between was A$0.038 in April 2025 and the closing high was A$0.485, first reached on 29 May 2026. Critical Metals closed at US$6.55 on 2 January 2025 and US$7.36 on 6 October 2026, a rise of 12 per cent. In between it fell to US$1.37 in April 2025 and reached US$29.97 on 14 October 2025. The 6 October 2026 close is about 75 per cent below that high, on Samso's arithmetic. Over the whole period the ASX company gained far more than the Nasdaq company. Samso does not attribute that to any one cause. The filings record that European Lithium sold Critical Metals shares during the period. The scheme booklet says it has sold 22.25 million Critical Metals shares since early 2024 for about US$365 million [R9]. The 2026 annual report gives 18.38 million shares sold in the year to June 2026 for US$239.6 million [R12]. The two figures cover different periods. Three sales announced in October 2025 came to US$121 million [R48]. European Lithium held A$296 million in cash at 30 June 2026 [R12]. The European Lithium takeover vote on 22 October 2026 Critical Metals has offered to buy European Lithium and pay in its own shares. The deal is a scheme of arrangement, which is a takeover that shareholders vote on and a court approves. The meeting is on 22 October 2026 [R9]. The number of Critical Metals shares paid for each European Lithium share is called the exchange ratio. It was first fixed at 0.035 [R11]. In August 2026 it was changed to a sliding scale. The scale uses the average price of Critical Metals shares over 20 Nasdaq trading days, ending two trading days before the meeting. At an average of US$8.00 or less, the ratio is 0.045. At an average of US$16.00 or more, the ratio is 0.025. Between the two, the ratio moves in a straight line [R9]. FIG. 08 draws the scale. The lower panel multiplies the ratio by the share price, which is Samso's arithmetic. The scheme booklet valued the offer at A$0.41 for each European Lithium share on 12 August 2026 [R9]. The independent expert here, Horizon Nexus Partners, concluded that the share scheme is "not fair but reasonable". It valued the offer at A$0.4031 against A$0.4431 for a European Lithium share, a shortfall of about 9 per cent [R9]. In this setting, not fair means the price is below the expert's value. Reasonable means the expert still sees enough other reasons to accept. If the scheme goes through, European Lithium would leave the ASX on 6 November 2026. Its shareholders would hold Critical Metals shares that trade in New York in US dollars. On the booklet's assumptions they would own about 38 per cent of the combined company. Three directors, Tony Sage, Malcolm Day and Mykhailo Zhernov, are on both boards [R9]. 9.00 — CONICO IN GREENLAND What Conico holds, what it has drilled and what it has applied for DISCLOSURE Samso Pty Ltd is a shareholder in Conico Limited. Conico (ASX: CNJ) is a Perth exploration company. Its Greenland ground is on the east coast, on the opposite side of the island from Tanbreez, and is held through a subsidiary called Longland Resources [R28]. FIG. 09 is the company's map and Table 05 lists the four project areas. The same annual report gives Ryberg as 4,521 square kilometres in its segment note. It describes Ryberg as held across three granted exploration licences, and its tenement schedule lists two licences for all of Greenland, MEL 2017/06 and MEL 2020/64 [R28]. These are quoted as published. Conico's two granted projects Conico drilled Ryberg in 2021 and 2022 and Mestersvig in 2022. These are base and precious metal projects. The company's documents make no rare earth claim for either as they are held today [R28]. An announcement in January 2021 named rare earths as one target on a larger licence area at Mestersvig [R42]. That larger area is not on the current tenement schedule [R28]. At Ryberg the best gold result was one metre at 42.81 grams of gold per tonne from 63 metres down the hole, in hole SODD003 [R30]. One metre is too short an interval to indicate size. The 2022 copper and nickel results were described by the company as low grade. One example is six metres at 0.27 per cent copper in hole MIDD011 [R29]. Mestersvig contains an old mine, Blyklippen, which the company says produced 545,000 tons, the unit used in the announcement, at 9.3 per cent lead and 9.9 per cent zinc from 1956 to 1962. The best 2022 result was 4.5 metres at 23.8 per cent zinc from 134 metres down the hole, in hole SBDD003 [R31]. All the lengths quoted for Ryberg and Mestersvig are measured down the hole, and the true thickness of the mineralised rock can be less. Neither project has a Mineral Resource. Conico has done no field work in Greenland since the 2022 season. The 2026 annual report says no field activities were undertaken at either project during the year [R28]. The 2024 annual report said a dispute with the drilling contractor over the 2022 season had prevented exploration [R45]. Conico reported on the arbitration in December 2024 and announced a settlement on 6 June 2025 [R43] [R44]. Conico carries its Greenland exploration assets at nil in the 2026 accounts, as it did a year earlier, meaning its balance sheet gives them no value [R28]. The Kai rare earth application Conico's rare earth ground is Kai. On 13 May 2026 the company announced it had applied for an exploration licence there [R27]. FIG. 10 shows the area. Kai covers part of the Kangerdlugssuaq intrusion, a circular body of alkaline rock about 33 kilometres across and about 50 million years old. An intrusion is a body of molten rock that cooled underground. Alkaline rock is igneous rock rich in sodium and potassium. The intrusion is on the east coast and is a different place from Kangerlussuaq, the airport town near Sarfartoq. Tanbreez and Kvanefjeld are also in alkaline rocks, in a different complex that is much older. A shared rock family does not mean shared mineralisation. Conico says rare earth minerals identified there "include perovskite, titanite (sphene), apatite, and eudialyte-group minerals" [R27]. The announcement says "the Kai Project has not seen any systematic modern exploration for REE". REE is short for rare earth elements. The executive chairman, Guy Le Page, called it "potentially a REE system of significant scale that has never been subject to modern, REE-focused exploration" [R27]. Conico reports no rare earth assays from Kai. An assay is a laboratory measurement of how much metal a sample holds. GEUS has looked at the same intrusion. Its 2015 assessment describes it as the largest syenite intrusion in Greenland, with veins carrying rare earths, and rates the rare earth potential as weak to moderate [R18]. Syenite is a coarse-grained alkaline igneous rock. The licence had not been granted when Conico's annual report was signed on 30 September 2026. The report says the applications "remain subject to grant by the Greenland Mineral Resources Authority" [R28]. Conico's other asset, cash and funding Conico's other asset is a half share of Mt Thirsty, a cobalt and nickel deposit near Norseman in Western Australia. The only funded work programme the annual report describes is drilling there, aimed at adding scandium to the resource [R28]. Conico had 651,986,967 shares on issue at 30 June 2026 [R28]. At the last price of A$0.01 on the ASX data feed read on 7 October 2026, the company is valued at about A$6.5 million, which is Samso's arithmetic [R37]. It held A$2.53 million in cash at 30 June 2026 and no debt [R38]. It raised money at A$0.008 a share between December 2025 and February 2026 [R28]. The auditor's report for the year to June 2026 includes a material uncertainty about going concern [R28]. That means there is a real question over whether the company can keep operating as planned without raising more money. Conico's June 2026 quarterly report says discussions are advanced on a possible partnership or joint venture for the East Greenland ground. No partner is named and no agreement has been announced [R38]. The Kai announcement names the Kringlerne deposit once, as an example of a deposit where eudialyte carries the rare earths [R27]. Conico beside European Lithium Both are ASX-listed companies with Greenland ground. Table 06 puts the filed facts side by side. European Lithium's gain followed a specific sequence. It held most of a Nasdaq company. That company bought a drilled deposit with a mining licence. The Nasdaq share price rose sharply in October 2025, and European Lithium sold shares into the rise. None of those steps has happened at Conico. Conico is at the licence application stage at Kai and is still exploring. 10.00 — THE CASE AGAINST Why so few mines have been built in Greenland THE STANDING COUNTERARGUMENT Greenland has been explored for decades and has two operating mines, a gold mine and an anorthosite mine, as reported by the news agency AFP in February 2026 [R39]. Statistics Greenland counted 93 people employed in mining and quarrying in 2024 [R40]. Statistics Greenland says there are "no railways or roads between towns and settlements". The population is 56,740 [R40]. A mine has to build its port, its power, its camp and its roads, and bring in most of its workforce. Kvanefjeld spent more than a decade in studies. The 2021 uranium law stopped it, and its owner now values it at nil [R17] [R20] [R23]. For Tanbreez the open items are the ones in sections 1.00, 3.00 and 4.00. There is no Ore Reserve and no published feasibility study. The resource estimate dates from 2016, and the independent specialist recommends an audit of it. The company says its flowsheet "remains conceptual and has not been validated at a commercial scale" [R7]. The loan letter has expired and the company has applied to renew it. One offtake is binding. The independent specialist said the 2025 study is not appropriate for assessing the value of the project. It could not confirm the uranium figure from the disclosed assays. Yttrium, a lower-priced metal, is the largest part of the heavy share [R6] [R9]. Three numbers work against the project as well. The rare earth grade is 0.38 per cent, below Kvanefjeld, Grønnedal and Sarfartoq in Table 03. The possible refinery is costed at US$1.85 billion, against US$150 million for the mine in the 2025 study. The 2025 average price of the main magnet oxide was US$69 a kilogram, below the US$110 floor the United States set for its own producer. For Conico the list is longer. Kai is an application and no licence has been granted. There are no rare earth assays and no resource. No field work has been done in Greenland since 2022. The Greenland assets are valued at nil. The company had A$2.53 million in cash at June 2026, and its auditor has flagged a material uncertainty about going concern [R28] [R38]. Tanbreez has held its mining licence since 2020. Its owner says it now has an approved mining plan with a term to 2050 [R1]. The owner had US$102.5 million in cash at June 2026, against a loss of US$228.2 million for the year [R7]. The company's reports put uranium below the legal limit and the heavy share at about 22 to 28 per cent including yttrium [R6] [R7]. Yttrium, dysprosium and terbium are all on the Chinese export control list of April 2025 [R19]. 11.00 — SAMSO VIEW What Samso takes from the record SAMSO TAKE In our industry, a permit is a milestone and it is a long way from a mine. Greenland has now, on the company's account, approved one rare earth project's mining plan, and it has told another, in the same complex, that it cannot proceed. In my opinion that tells investors more about Greenland than any single resource number. The country will license a mine on its own terms. Tanbreez still has to show it can turn eudialyte into saleable rare earths at a cost that works. That is a metallurgy question, and metallurgy is usually where these stories are decided. The pilot plant and the feasibility study are the two things I will be watching. European Lithium shareholders have done well and the numbers are in the filings. The expert's words, "not fair but reasonable", are in the booklet ahead of the vote on 22 October. If the scheme goes through, the ASX loses its listed holder of Tanbreez. Energy Transition Minerals, Eclipse Metals and Conico are ASX companies with rare earth ground, applications or a claim in Greenland. Samso owns shares in Conico, so weigh my comments with that in mind. Conico's rare earth position is an early-stage application over ground that has had no systematic modern exploration for rare earths. It has no licence yet, no rare earth assays and no field work since 2022. Investors already know an explorer at this stage is priced on what might be there. The question I would ask of any company with ground in Greenland is who pays for the first drill hole, and when. THE VOCABULARY, IN PLAIN ENGLISH Rare earths. A group of 17 metals. The light ones include neodymium and praseodymium. The heavy ones include dysprosium and terbium. Rare earth oxide. The form in which rare earth content is measured and sold. Total rare earth oxide, or TREO, adds all of them together, including yttrium. Grade. The share of the rock that is the metal of interest. A grade of 0.38 per cent means 3.8 kilograms in each tonne. Mineral Resource. An estimate of the mineralised rock in the ground. Indicated is the more certain category and Inferred the less certain. Ore Reserve. The part of a resource that a detailed study has shown can be mined at a profit. JORC Code. The Australian rule book for reporting resources and reserves. S-K 1300 is the United States equivalent and NI 43-101 is the Canadian one. Cut-off grade. The grade below which rock is left out of a resource estimate. Flowsheet. The sequence of processing steps from rock to product. Mt. Million tonnes. Exploration licence and exploitation licence. The first is the right to look for minerals. The second is the right to mine them. Kakortokite and eudialyte. Kakortokite is the layered rock at Tanbreez. Eudialyte is the red mineral in it that carries the rare earths. Carbonatite. An igneous rock made mostly of carbonate minerals. Many rare earth mines are in carbonatites. Concentrate. The product of the first stage of processing, in which the valuable mineral has been separated from most of the waste. Recovery. The share of the metal in the rock that ends up in the product. PEA. Preliminary economic assessment, the earliest type of mining study. A feasibility study is the detailed version. NPV and discount rate. Net present value is a project's future cash flows marked down to today's money. The discount rate is the rate used for the mark-down. Offtake. A contract to buy a mine's product. A letter of intent or a term sheet is an earlier, non-binding step. Royalty. The share of sales paid to the government or to a previous owner. Scheme of arrangement. A takeover that shareholders vote on and a court approves. Exchange ratio. In a takeover paid in shares, the number of the buyer's shares given for each share of the target. Independent expert. An adviser who tells shareholders whether an offer is fair, meaning at or above the expert's value, and reasonable, meaning worth accepting on balance. Parts per million. One part per million is one gram in a tonne. Assay. A laboratory measurement of how much metal a sample holds. Going concern. An accounting term for a business that can keep operating. A material uncertainty means there is a real question over whether the business can keep operating without more funding. References and sources Every source has an identifier, and the same identifier appears in the text where the source is used. Company figures come from documents lodged with the ASX or the US Securities and Exchange Commission wherever Samso could reach them. Share prices and cash balances are stated at their dates and will have moved. Figures labelled PLATE are photographs. Figures labelled FIG are maps and charts. Each caption says whether the figure is reproduced from a named source or is an original Samso illustration of sourced data. [R1] Critical Metals Corp. "Critical Metals Corp. (Nasdaq: CRML) Announces Receipt of Formal Greenland Government Mining Approvals for the Tanbreez Mine, Valid Through the Year 2050". Company release, 5 October 2026. criticalmetalscorp.com [R2] Colin McClelland, Mining.com. "Greenland government approves Tanbreez rare earth mine plan". 5 October 2026. mining.com [R3] Marleny Arnoldi, Mining Weekly. "Critical Metals Corporation approved to operate Tanbreez through 2050". 6 October 2026. miningweekly.com [R4] Meredith Schwartz and Gracelin Baskaran, CSIS, Washington. "Greenland, Rare Earths, and Arctic Security". 8 January 2026. csis.org [R5] European Lithium Limited. "Maiden Mineral Resource Estimate 45MT Tanbreez Rare Earth Project Greenland". ASX announcement, 13 March 2025. announcements.asx.com.au [R6] Critical Metals Corp. S-K 1300 Technical Report Summary, Tanbreez Project, Agricola Mining Consultants. First issued 12 March 2025, amended with an effective date of 13 April 2026. Filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. sec.gov [R7] Critical Metals Corp. Annual report on Form 20-F for the year to 30 June 2026. Dated 25 September 2026. sec.gov [R8] Critical Metals Corp. Tanbreez Preliminary Economic Assessment, Agricola Mining Consultants. 31 March 2025. criticalmetalscorp.com [R9] European Lithium Limited. Scheme Booklet for the acquisition by Critical Metals Corp, including the independent expert report of Horizon Nexus Partners dated 8 September 2026. 15 September 2026. Read from the copy filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. sec.gov [R10] European Lithium Limited. "Critical Metals Corp. to Acquire Tanbreez, One of the World's Largest Known Rare Earths Assets". 11 June 2024. announcements.asx.com.au [R11] European Lithium Limited. "European Lithium enters into Binding Scheme Implementation Deed with Critical Metals Corp.". 19 May 2026. announcements.asx.com.au [R12] European Lithium Limited. Annual Report 2026. ASX, 30 September 2026. announcements.asx.com.au [R13] Critical Metals Corp. "Critical Metals Corp (Nasdaq: CRML) Achieves Breakthrough Tanbreez Heavy Rare Earth Results: >99% Dissolution of Eudialyte Concentrate Into 19 Ultra-High-Purity Rare Earth Products; Refinery Study Projects US$1.8 to 2.2b in Annual Refinery Revenue". Title quoted as published, with the dash in the revenue range written as "to". 16 September 2026. criticalmetalscorp.com [R14] Critical Metals Corp. "CRML Confirms Outstanding 2.96% TREO and HREO Refined Concentrate, Yielding ~40% Increase in Historical Metallurgical Test Work Results at Tanbreez". 31 March 2026. criticalmetalscorp.com [R15] Critical Metals Corp. Company release on the 15-year binding offtake agreement for Tanbreez with REalloys Inc. Described here because the published title uses a US spelling. 21 May 2026. criticalmetalscorp.com [R16] Critical Metals Corp. "Critical Metals Corp Secures US$120,000,000 LOI for a 15-Year Term Loan From the US Federal Government Bank (EXIM Bank) for the Development of its Tanbreez Rare Earth Project in Greenland". 16 June 2025. criticalmetalscorp.com [R17] Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS). MiMa report 2023/1, review of the critical raw material resource potential in Greenland. Rare earth chapter, pages 84 to 89. 2023. data.geus.dk [R18] Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS). MiMa report 2015/2, "Rare Earth Element (REE) exploration potential and projects in Greenland". 2015. data.geus.dk [R19] United States Geological Survey. Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, rare earths chapter and heavy rare earths chapter. February 2026. pubs.usgs.gov [R20] Government of Greenland. Decision regarding application for an exploitation licence on the basis of exploration licence 2010-02. 1 June 2023. naalakkersuisut.gl [R21] Greenland Mineral Resources Authority. Mineral Resources Act page, including Act No. 20 of 1 December 2021 on uranium. Read October 2026. govmin.gl [R22] Energy Transition Minerals Ltd. "Legal Update". ASX announcement, 2 September 2026. asx.com.au announcement list for ETM [R23] Energy Transition Minerals Ltd. Interim Financial Report. ASX, lodged 7 September 2026. asx.com.au announcement list for ETM [R24] Energy Transition Minerals Ltd. "Greenlandic Government Decision on Kvanefjeld Extension". ASX announcement, 29 June 2026. listcorp.com copy [R25] Neo Performance Materials. "Neo Partners with Greenland Mines to Advance Sarfartoq Rare Earth Project". 20 May 2026. neomaterials.com [R26] Greenland Mines Ltd. Current report on Form 8-K on completion of the Sarfartoq acquisition. Filed 4 September 2026. sec.gov [R27] Conico Limited. "CNJ applies for two highly prospective projects in Greenland". ASX announcement, 13 May 2026. announcements.asx.com.au [R28] Conico Limited. Annual Report to shareholders for the year to 30 June 2026. ASX, 30 September 2026. announcements.asx.com.au [R29] Conico Limited. "Assays Received for the Ryberg Polymetallic Project". ASX announcement, 25 November 2022. announcements.asx.com.au [R30] Conico Limited. "Gold Assays at Sortekap". ASX announcement, 26 April 2022. announcements.asx.com.au [R31] Conico Limited. "Mestersvig Drill Results and High-Grade Rock Chip Assays". ASX announcement, 17 January 2023. announcements.asx.com.au [R32] Critical Metals Corp. "Greenland Government Approves Transfer of Final 50.5% of Tanbreez, Taking Critical Metals Corp. to 92.5% Ownership". 17 April 2026. criticalmetalscorp.com [R33] Critical Metals Corp. "Critical Metals Corp. Accelerates the Development of the Tanbreez Project With an Immediate $30 Million Strategic Program to Advance One of the World's Largest REE Deposits Towards Production". 10 March 2026. criticalmetalscorp.com [R34] Governments of the United States, Denmark and Greenland. Agreement to amend and supplement the agreement of 27 April 1951 on the defence of Greenland. Done at New York, 22 September 2026. Read from the copy published by The Hill. thehill.com copy [R35] European Commission. Commission Decision (EU) 2025/1174 of 4 June 2025 recognising certain critical raw material projects located in third countries and in overseas countries or territories as Strategic Projects. 4 June 2025. eur-lex.europa.eu [R36] MP Materials Corp. Current report on Form 8-K on the agreements with the United States government. Filed 10 July 2025. sec.gov [R37] Share price data. European Lithium daily closes from FT Markets. Critical Metals daily closes from Nasdaq. Last prices for Conico and Energy Transition Minerals from the ASX data feed. Shares on issue from the company reports [R23] [R28]. Market values are Samso arithmetic. Read 7 October 2026. nasdaq.com [R38] Conico Limited. Quarterly Activities Report and Appendix 5B for the June 2026 quarter. ASX, 31 July 2026. announcements.asx.com.au [R39] Agence France-Presse. Report on Greenland mining licences and operating mines, carried by Yahoo News. February 2026. Secondary source. yahoo.com [R40] Statistics Greenland. "Greenland in Figures 2026". 2026. stat.gl [R41] Critical Metals Corp. "CRML Commences a 10,000 Meter Drilling Campaign at Tanbreez Rare Earth Project, Greenland". Company release, 17 June 2026. criticalmetalscorp.com [R42] Conico Limited. "Mestersvig Project Enlarged by 1,198km2 to Include Additional Mineralisation". ASX announcement, 29 January 2021. asx.com.au, Conico announcements page [R43] Conico Limited. "Update on Arbitration Process". ASX announcement, 19 December 2024. asx.com.au, Conico announcements page [R44] Conico Limited. "Settlement of Legal Dispute, Recapitalisation and Consolidation". ASX announcement, 6 June 2025. asx.com.au, Conico announcements page [R45] Conico Limited. Annual Report for the year to 30 June 2024. ASX, 2024. asx.com.au, Conico announcements page [R46] Eclipse Metals Ltd. "Greenland REE Resource More Than Doubles to 208Mt". ASX announcement, 29 April 2026. announcements.asx.com.au [R47] Alba Mineral Resources plc. "Motzfeldt Acquisition Completion", 28 October 2025, and "Operational Update", 9 March 2026. London Stock Exchange regulatory news, read from the Investegate copy. investegate.co.uk copy [R48] European Lithium Limited. Three ASX announcements on sales of Critical Metals shares, for US$21 million, US$50 million and US$50 million. 7, 13 and 17 October 2025. announcements.asx.com.au, link to the third [R49] Critical Metals Corp. Two company releases on term sheets for 50/50 joint ventures, with a Romanian party and with a Saudi Arabian party. 9 December 2025 and 15 January 2026. criticalmetalscorp.com, link to the first [R50] Critical Metals Corp. Company release on the Tanbreez Preliminary Economic Assessment, furnished on Form 6-K. 31 March 2025. sec.gov [R51] Arkadian Strategic Metals plc, formerly Alba Mineral Resources plc. "Change of Name and Ticker Code". London Stock Exchange regulatory news, 20 May 2026. Read from the Investegate copy. investegate.co.uk copy [R52] European Lithium Limited. Annual Report for the year ended 30 June 2024. ASX, 30 October 2024. announcements.asx.com.au [R53] Critical Metals Corp. Company release on the approval and start of construction of the Tanbreez pilot plant and multi-use facilities in Qaqortoq. 7 January 2026. criticalmetalscorp.com Cover photo: Rare earth oxides, Peggy Greb, USDA Agricultural Research Service. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rareearthoxides.jpg) The Samso Way – Seek the Research Here at Samso, we pride ourselves on delivering content for investors that is independent and informed by over three decades of experience in the industry. Our content is well-researched and is only created if I see merit in discussing the company's story. Our mission is simple: cut through the noise and spotlight what matters—genuine stories, grounded insights, and real opportunity. 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About Samso Samso is a trusted platform that equips dedicated investors with up-to-date industry knowledge and insights from top CEOs and thought leaders. By staying informed on business advancements and market trends, investors can enhance their financial decisions through a combination of expert guidance and their own research. Coffee with Samso, Samso Insights, Samso News and Samso Research are four ways into the same work. Interviews, long-form research, short takes on announcements and company-specific studies. Every one of them is about how to think about investing rather than what to buy. Samso Insights | www.samso.com.au | An Investor Lens on ASX-Listed Companies Samso Insights are independent research commentary for general information only. Nothing in this document is financial product advice, and it does not take into account any reader's objectives, financial situation or needs. 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Samso Market Update | Friday, 9 October 2026 | Market close 4:30pm AEDT Firmus withdrew its application to list on the ASX today, and the S&P/ASX 200 closed up 55.7 points or 0.64% at 8,716.6. Firmus is a data centre operator that had been due to list on 23 October. The All Ordinaries, which tracks the 500 largest listed companies, rose 0.62% to 8,877.7. The S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries, an index of the companies ranked 101 to 300 by size, rose 0.36% to 3,281.9. Thursday's edition is ASX today, Thursday 8 October 2026. ASX today: Key Highlights The S&P/ASX 200 closed at 8,716.6, up 55.7 points or 0.64% (Yahoo Finance, 4:14pm AEDT). It fell 0.77% on Thursday. Nine of the 11 sectors rose. Information technology was the strongest, up 2.23%, ahead of consumer discretionary at 2.16%. Telecommunications was the weakest, down 0.57%. Materials fell 0.03%. Firmus withdrew its application to list on the ASX. Maas Group Holdings Limited (ASX: MGH), a Firmus shareholder and supplier, was halted in the morning and closed down 6.65% at A$4.63. Uranium companies fell in all four size bands. Boss Energy Ltd (ASX: BOE) fell 9.93% and Deep Yellow Limited (ASX: DYL) fell 7.11%. Across 1,637 ASX-listed companies, 579 rose, 471 fell and 587 were unchanged (ASX data, 4:34pm AEDT). Gold futures for December were at US$4,216.10 an ounce at 4:24pm AEDT. The Australian dollar was buying approximately 69.9 US cents. The Firmus float and the rise in technology shares ABC News reported shortly after 9:00am AEDT that the Firmus float had been pulled after poor demand. It reported that Firmus withdrew its application "after big investors baulked at the price". A float, or initial public offering (IPO), is the first sale of a company's shares to the public. Maas Group described the Firmus statement in its own ASX release. It said the Firmus board had considered "recent market volatility and prevailing market conditions" and decided that the terms on which the float could proceed "would not appropriately reflect the strength of Firmus' business and long-term growth outlook". Maas said Firmus will now seek capital from private markets and consider other public and private options. Samso has read the Maas release and has not seen the Firmus statement itself. The index rose on the same day. The sector figures are from Yahoo Finance at 4:14pm AEDT. Information technology rose 2.23% and consumer discretionary rose 2.16%. Real estate rose 1.88%, utilities 1.75%, consumer staples 1.25%, health care 1.14%, industrials 0.87%, financials 0.49% and energy 0.22%. Materials fell 0.03% and telecommunications fell 0.57%. The gold sub-index, which tracks listed gold miners, rose 1.87%. ABC News reporter Yiying Li wrote at 12:18pm AEDT that information technology was "rebounding from its recent decline" and that the sector was down 2.8% over the past five days. Samso found no domestic economic release or Reserve Bank of Australia announcement during the session. Blue Chips (above A$1 billion) The four bands in this edition are Samso's own size bands. Each company is placed by its market capitalisation at Thursday's close. Turnover is the dollar value of shares traded in the session. Maas Group Holdings Limited (ASX: MGH) closed at A$4.63, down 6.65%, on turnover of A$33.10 million. It fell 22.38% on Thursday to A$4.96. Trading was paused at 9:57am AEDT and the shares went into a trading halt at 10:56am. A trading halt is a stop in trading that a company requests while it prepares an announcement. Maas released its update at 2:43pm and the shares traded again in the afternoon. Maas said it bought 1,088,861 ordinary shares and 1,091,100 preference shares in Firmus this year at an average cost of approximately A$188 a share. It said its subsidiary JLE Group has received work orders from Firmus totalling approximately A$1.1 billion and payments of A$373 million against them. It said it expects the work to be completed by the end of 2027. Sunrise Energy Metals Limited (ASX: SRL) fell 11.05% to A$17.15 on turnover of A$20.32 million, with no ASX announcement since yesterday afternoon. Deep Yellow Limited (ASX: DYL) fell 7.11% to A$0.98 and Silex Systems Limited (ASX: SLX) fell 5.42% to A$4.01. PLS Group Limited (ASX: PLS) fell 5.41% to A$3.50 on turnover of A$139.91 million. NexGen Energy (Canada) Ltd (ASX: NXG) fell 3.84% to A$12.28 and Liontown Limited (ASX: LTR) fell 3.75% to A$0.77. None of the five had an ASX announcement since yesterday afternoon. Electro Optic Systems Holdings Limited (ASX: EOS) fell 4.25% to A$10.13 on turnover of A$103.66 million, on the day it announced a counter-drone contract. The title of the release gave a value of A$700 million. Generation Development Group Limited (ASX: GDG) rose 7.31% to A$2.79, with no ASX announcement since yesterday afternoon. DPM Metals Inc. (ASX: DPM) rose 6.23% to A$55.94 on the day it lodged its third quarter production result with the ASX, which was 97,000 gold equivalent ounces. Gold equivalent ounces convert a miner's other metals into gold at market prices so that output can be stated as one number. West African Resources Limited (ASX: WAF) rose 5.43% to A$3.69 on turnover of A$29.66 million and Lovisa Holdings Limited (ASX: LOV) rose 5.04% to A$23.57. Lovisa fell 9.15% on Thursday. The Lottery Corporation Limited (ASX: TLC) rose 4.64% to A$5.19 on turnover of A$96.54 million, after a rise of 3.77% on Thursday. Pro Medicus Limited (ASX: PME) rose 4.50% to A$165.73. West African Resources, Lovisa, The Lottery Corporation and Pro Medicus had no price-sensitive ASX announcement since yesterday afternoon. Mid Caps (A$500 million to A$1 billion) Weebit Nano Ltd (ASX: WBT) fell 11.11% to A$2.80 on turnover of A$10.55 million, after a fall of 11.52% on Thursday. Boss Energy Ltd (ASX: BOE) fell 9.93% to A$1.36 on turnover of A$15.62 million. Core Lithium Ltd (ASX: CXO) fell 7.55% to A$0.245, its third fall of more than 6% in three sessions. Artrya Limited (ASX: AYA) fell 7.38% to A$3.01. Bannerman Energy Ltd (ASX: BMN) fell 7.37% to A$3.14 on the day it announced that its share purchase plan had completed. Vulcan Energy Resources Limited (ASX: VUL) fell 6.89% to A$1.42 and PMET Resources Inc. (ASX: PMT) fell 6.02% to A$0.39. None of the seven had a price-sensitive ASX announcement since yesterday afternoon. Gains in this band were smaller. Ricegrowers Limited (ASX: SGLLV) rose 6.04% to A$13.52. Australian Clinical Labs Limited (ASX: ACL) rose 5.00% to A$2.94. New Murchison Gold Limited (ASX: NMG) rose 4.76% to A$0.066 and IDP Education Limited (ASX: IEL) rose 4.76% to A$2.20. None had a price-sensitive ASX announcement since yesterday afternoon. Small Caps (A$150 million to A$500 million) DXN Limited (ASX: DXN) fell 16.67% to A$0.40 on turnover of A$4.81 million, with no ASX announcement since yesterday afternoon. Metallium Limited (ASX: MTM) fell 11.86% to A$0.26. Alligator Energy Limited (ASX: AGE) fell 10.26% to A$0.035. EchoIQ Limited (ASX: EIQ) fell 6.19% to A$0.53 on turnover of A$1.99 million and Dateline Resources Limited (ASX: DTR) fell 5.56% to A$0.085. The only price-sensitive release among the five was lodged under Metallium's code by another company, Environmental Clean Technologies Limited, about test work using Metallium's technology. Prospect Resources Limited (ASX: PSC) rose 8.11% to A$0.30, after a rise of 6.73% on Thursday. Mastermyne Group Limited (ASX: MYE) rose 6.21% to A$0.77 on the day it announced a mining services contract at the Tahmoor coal mine in New South Wales. The company said the first two years are worth approximately A$80 million and the contract could reach approximately A$240 million over six years if two extension options are taken up. Astral Resources NL (ASX: AAR) rose 6.06% to A$0.175 on the day it announced a larger Mineral Resource at its Spargoville gold project in Western Australia. A Mineral Resource is an estimate of metal in the ground and is not a measure of what can be mined at a profit. Astral said the Spargoville estimate rose 102% to 281,000 ounces of contained gold. Micro Caps (below A$150 million) Moves in this band were on low turnover. S2 Resources Ltd (ASX: S2R) rose 27.27% to A$0.07 on turnover of A$0.06 million. Recharge Metals Limited (ASX: REC) rose 22.22% to A$0.044 and Mamba Exploration Limited (ASX: M24) rose 20.75% to A$0.064. Mamba fell 18.46% on Thursday. Micro-X Limited (ASX: MX1) rose 18.52% to A$0.064 on turnover of A$0.63 million. None of the four had a price-sensitive ASX announcement since yesterday afternoon. Normandy Minerals Ltd (ASX: NMD) rose 20.00% to A$0.36 on turnover of A$0.22 million, with no ASX announcement since yesterday afternoon. Samso reviewed the company's float in Normandy Minerals IPO. FBR Ltd (ASX: FBR) fell 14.29% to A$0.054 on turnover of A$0.29 million. Peninsula Energy Limited (ASX: PEN) fell 10.87% to A$0.205 on turnover of A$0.62 million. Avecho Biotechnology Limited (ASX: AVE) fell 11.11% to A$0.016. None of the three had an ASX announcement since yesterday afternoon. Argosy Minerals Limited (ASX: AGY) fell 10.71% to A$0.025 on the day it announced that its share purchase plan had completed. Commodities and Currency Each change below is measured against the Thursday close quoted in this morning's edition. Prices are from Yahoo Finance at about 4:24pm AEDT. Gold futures for December were at US$4,216.10 an ounce, up about 1.4%. Copper for December was at US$6.646 a pound, up about 1.4%. Brent crude for December was at US$103.03 a barrel, down about 0.9%. West Texas Intermediate, the US oil benchmark, was at US$90.46 a barrel for November delivery, down about 0.8%. A futures contract is an agreement to buy or sell at a set price on a later date, and the month named is when it falls due. ABC News showed iron ore flat at US$99.98 a tonne at 2:27pm AEDT. This morning's edition quoted US$91.13 a tonne from the same source. Samso could not reconcile the two figures. The Australian dollar was buying approximately 69.9 US cents at 4:32pm AEDT. It was at approximately 69.6 US cents at 8:45am AEDT. Samso Concluding Comments The S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.64% on the day Firmus withdrew its float, and it recovered most of Thursday's 0.77% fall. Nine of the 11 sectors rose and information technology rose the most. Maas Group fell a further 6.65% and has set out the size of its Firmus shareholding and its Firmus work orders. Uranium and lithium companies fell across the size bands, and Samso found no announcement or report that explains those falls. General information only. This is not financial advice. Samso Market Update | Friday, 9 October 2026 | Pre-market 9:45am AEDT Futures point to a slightly higher open on the ASX today. ASX 200 futures were up 0.2% at 8,697 points at about 7:30am AEDT, according to ABC News. A futures contract is an agreement to buy or sell at a set price on a later date, and its price shows where traders expect the index to go. The S&P/ASX 200 closed on Thursday at 8,660.9, down 66.8 points or 0.77%. The All Ordinaries, which tracks the 500 largest listed companies, fell 0.80% to 8,823.2. The S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries, an index of the companies ranked 101 to 300 by size, fell 1.22% to 3,270.0. The Australian dollar was buying approximately 69.6 US cents at 8:45am AEDT. Thursday's edition is ASX today, Thursday 8 October 2026. ASX today: Key Highlights ASX 200 futures were up 0.2% at 8,697 points at about 7:30am AEDT (ABC News). The Nasdaq Composite fell 1.25% on Thursday to 27,193.34. The S&P 500 fell 0.47% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.10%. Yahoo Finance reported that chip makers fell after a Financial Times report on OpenAI's revenue. Brent crude for December closed at US$103.92 a barrel, up approximately 3.7%. Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 1.42% on Thursday to 69,042.11. Germany's DAX fell 1.18%. No Australian Bureau of Statistics release is scheduled for today. Wall Street overnight Wall Street finished mixed on Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.10% to 51,231.64. The S&P 500 fell 0.47% to 7,765.36, its second fall in a row. The Nasdaq Composite fell 1.25% to 27,193.34. The Russell 2000, an index of smaller US companies, was little changed at approximately 2,793. Yahoo Finance reported that the Financial Times had put OpenAI's annualised revenue at US$20 billion lower than previously estimated. OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT. Yahoo Finance reported that Nvidia, Micron and Intel fell, and that the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, which tracks US chip makers, was down as much as 4% during the session. The US 10-year Treasury yield was about 5.23% at about 3pm New York time on Thursday, down about 5 basis points from 5.28% on Wednesday. A Treasury is a US government bond. A bond yield is the yearly return from buying a government bond at today's price, and when yields rise, bond prices fall. A basis point is one hundredth of a percentage point. The US Labor Department reported that new claims for unemployment benefits fell by 2,000 to 197,000 in the week ended 3 October. Japan The Nikkei 225 closed on Thursday at 69,042.11, down 993.60 points or 1.42%. It had closed on Wednesday at 70,035.71. Trading Economics reported that higher oil prices raised inflation concerns, and that technology and banking shares led the falls. It also reported that a Bank of Japan board member favoured a gradual approach to raising interest rates. The US dollar was buying approximately 157.79 yen at 8:45am AEDT. London and Europe London's FTSE 100 closed on Thursday at 10,441.6, down 0.16%. Germany's DAX fell 1.18% to 24,806.97, after a fall of 1.35% on Wednesday. France's CAC 40 fell 0.51% to 7,729.69. Currencies The Australian dollar was buying approximately 69.6 US cents at 8:45am AEDT. It was at approximately 69.6 US cents at the same time on Thursday. The US dollar index, which measures the US dollar against six major currencies, was at 102.10 late on Thursday, little changed from Wednesday. The euro was buying approximately US$1.122 at 8:45am AEDT. The US dollar was buying approximately 157.79 yen. Commodities Brent crude for December closed on Thursday at US$103.92 a barrel, up approximately 3.7%. The contract month is the month a futures contract falls due. West Texas Intermediate, the US oil benchmark, closed at US$91.18 a barrel for November delivery, up approximately 3.3%. Yahoo Finance reported three reasons for the rise in oil. They were reports that the United States was weighing new strikes on Iran, production cuts in the Gulf of Mexico ahead of a tropical storm, and attacks on shipping in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. It reported that prices eased after President Donald Trump said the US "will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections". Gold futures for December closed at US$4,158.30 an ounce, up approximately 0.4%. Silver for December fell approximately 1.4% to US$59.43 an ounce. Copper for December closed at US$6.5505 a pound. Iron ore was down 0.1% at US$91.13 a tonne, according to ABC News. Today's diary No Australian Bureau of Statistics release is scheduled for today, according to the ABS release calendar. The Reserve Bank of Australia lists no statistical release for today. Firmus, a data centre operator, was due to list on the ASX on 23 October. ABC News reported this morning that Bloomberg said Firmus is set to delay its float. Samso has not seen a Firmus statement. Samso Concluding Comments The Nasdaq fell 1.25% on Thursday and the Dow rose 0.10%. Yahoo Finance linked the fall in chip makers to a Financial Times report on OpenAI's revenue. Brent crude closed above US$103 a barrel, and the Nikkei 225 fell 1.42% to finish below 70,000. ASX 200 futures were up 0.2% at about 7:30am AEDT, after the index fell 0.77% on Thursday. General information only. This is not financial advice.

Power Minerals has risen through most of 2026 and a two-year chart looks like an uptrend. Samso measures the trend, the momentum and the turnover behind it, and explains each measure in plain English as it arrives. Alistair Stephens has been presenting Power Minerals and the opportunities the company is looking at across its portfolio. That presentation is why Samso opened the chart. It is not what this piece is about. Most people who open a two-year chart of Power Minerals will say the same thing. It looks like it is going up. That sentence is what this article tests. Everything below is a measurement of the share price line and nothing below is a view on the company's projects, its accounts or its plans. All prices are Yahoo Finance daily data for PNN.AX covering 19 September 2024 to 18 September 2026, which is 507 trading sessions. 1.00 THE TWO-YEAR RANGE. Where the Price Is Today for Power Minerals Over those two years the lowest price Power Minerals reached was A$0.055, on 27 June 2025. The highest was A$0.305, on 16 October 2025. The last close of A$0.15 is 50.8 per cent below that high and 173 per cent above that low. Both of those are true at the same time. A single percentage says almost nothing until the date it was measured from is known, and that is why technical traders use measures that do not depend on a chosen starting point. FIGURE 01 plots the whole period, with turnover underneath the price. 2.00 MOVING AVERAGES. The Long Trend, Measured A moving average is the average closing price over a set number of trading days, recalculated each day. A 200-day moving average is the average of the last 200 closes. Traders use it because it strips out the daily noise and leaves the direction. At 18 September 2026 the 200-day average for Power Minerals was A$0.1232. The last close of A$0.15 is 21.8 per cent above it. The average itself has risen 5.85 per cent over the previous 20 sessions, so the line is pointing upwards rather than flattening. The 50-day average, which covers about ten trading weeks, was A$0.1462, and the close is 2.6 per cent above that one as well. Both lines are drawn in FIGURE 02. The 200-day line is the measure most often quoted when a professional describes a stock as being in a long uptrend. Paul Tudor Jones has said in published interviews that he uses it as a risk filter and stays out of things trading below it. On this measure, the reader who said the chart is going up is correct. 3.00 ADX. Whether the Trend Is Strong Enough to Be Called One A price can be above a rising average and still be drifting rather than trending. The Average Directional Index, or ADX, was introduced by J. Welles Wilder in New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems in 1978 to separate the two. It measures how strongly a price is moving in one direction. It does not say which direction. Power Minerals reads 29.5. The convention in the market, which is later convention rather than Wilder's own, is that a reading above 25 describes a market that is trending and one below 20 describes a market that is not. That is a convention rather than a proven result, and it is fair to say so. Wilder paired ADX with two companion lines. The positive directional indicator, +DI, measures upward movement, and the negative directional indicator, -DI, measures downward movement. Power Minerals reads +DI 25.6 against -DI 19.8, so the movement is on the upside. All three lines are in FIGURE 03. The long trend is real and it is up. That is as far as the long measures go. 4.00 THE SHORT HORIZON. Three Measures That Have Turned Down Three measures answer a shorter question, and all three now read the other way. The 10-day exponential moving average is an average of the last ten closes that gives more weight to the most recent days. Marty Schwartz described it in Pit Bull in 1999 as the measure he used to tell which side of a trade to be on. It was A$0.1553 on 18 September, and the close of A$0.15 is 3.4 per cent below it. MACD, the moving average convergence divergence, is widely credited to Gerald Appel, an American money manager and newsletter writer, who set it out in his own booklet, The Moving Average Convergence-Divergence Trading Method, in the late 1970s. It takes the difference between a 12-day and a 26-day exponential average and compares that difference against its own 9-day average, called the signal line. When the first falls below the second, recent prices have weakened against the longer ones. On Power Minerals the MACD line was -0.00034 against a signal line of 0.00307, and it crossed below on 9 September, seven sessions before the last close. The fair caveat is that MACD is built from moving averages and will produce crossings that lead nowhere when a price is moving sideways. The Relative Strength Index, also Wilder's, in the same 1978 book, compares the size of recent gains against recent falls on a scale of 0 to 100. Power Minerals reads 46.2. It read 67.8 on 7 September and 84.8 on 15 October 2025. Wilder proposed 70 and 30 as the levels at which a price could be called overbought or oversold. On a small explorer in a re-rating those levels do not transfer, because a stock on a run can hold above 70 for weeks. FIGURE 04 carries both measures. Over the last 20 sessions the price has fallen 11.8 per cent. Since the close of A$0.185 on 7 September it has fallen 18.9 per cent in nine sessions. So the chart carries two readings at once. Measured over months it is going up. Measured over the last fortnight it is going down. Neither cancels the other, and a reader looking at a chart should always know which window a claim was made in. 5.00 16 OCTOBER 2025. The Heaviest Session of the Two Years The heaviest session in the two years was 16 October 2025. Power Minerals closed at A$0.225 on 15 October. The next morning it opened at A$0.285, which is 26.7 per cent higher. It traded as high as A$0.305, the highest price of the two years. It then closed at A$0.215, which is 24.6 per cent below its own opening price and 4.4 per cent below the previous close. FIGURE 05 draws that session with the eight sessions either side of it. Turnover was 35,638,918 shares. Two of the preceding 20 sessions were halted and traded nothing, and across the 18 that did trade the middle one traded 1,635,993 shares. That makes 16 October 21.8 times the recent normal. It remains the largest single session by share count in the two years. A session that opens far above the previous close, makes the highest price of the period, and then closes below where it opened is what technical traders describe as a reversal. The buying came in at the open and the sellers had the rest of the day. The ASX headline that morning read "PNN BRIEFING AUS AMBASSADOR AHEAD MEETING WITH US PRESIDENT". The ASX caps a headline at 60 characters, and the document itself is titled "PNN Invited to Brief Australian Ambassador Ahead of Prime Minister's Meeting With President Trump". From that A$0.305 high the price fell to A$0.078 on 18 December 2025, a fall of 74.4 per cent in two months. The volume figure on its own said nothing about direction. The distance between the open and the close said all of it. 6.00 VOLUME AGAINST ITS OWN MEDIAN. What the Turnover Has Done Since July Volume is easier to read against its own recent history than as a raw number. The usual method is to take the median of the last 20 sessions, which is the middle value once they are sorted, and express the day being looked at as a multiple of it. The median is used rather than the average because one enormous day would drag an average upwards and make every other day look quiet. A large multiple is rare. Across the 507 sessions in the two years, 13 of them traded at ten times their own preceding 20-day median or more. That is about one session in 39. Power Minerals has been reporting rare earth drilling results from its Morro do Ferro project through this period. The turnover each one has drawn is set out in TABLE 01 and drawn in FIGURE 06. The company has continued drilling and continued reporting, and the turnover each announcement attracts has fallen at every step. That is a measurement of how the market has responded, and it is not a comment on the results themselves. 7.00 CHART TRAPS. Three Things in the Line That Are Not Price Some of what a chart draws is not a market at all, and these are the traps a reader should know about before trusting any pattern. Flat sessions with no turnover. In the two years, 32 sessions show no shares traded and a flat price. Three of them are recent, on 21 August, 2 September and 3 September 2026, when the shares were in a trading halt. A chart draws a halt as a flat line, which looks like a quiet market rather than a closed one. Two of them are visible at the left of FIGURE 05, on 6 and 7 October 2025. New shares issued during the window. Power Minerals lodged a cleansing notice on eleven separate dates between 1 May 2025 and 26 June 2026. A cleansing notice is what a company files when it issues new shares, and each one adds shares to the register. A moving average calculated across such a date is arithmetically correct and is comparing two slightly different companies. How thin the market is. Two of the last 20 sessions were halted, and across the 18 that did trade the middle one turned over about A$400,000 worth of stock. A pattern drawn by that much turnover is the work of a small number of participants. 8.00 THE FAILURE CONDITION. What Would Change This Reading Four things, all of them visible on the chart. 1. A close below the 200-day average, A$0.1232 at 18 September, held for more than a few sessions and on turnover above the recent median. 2. The 200-day line turning down. It is rising 5.85 per cent over 20 sessions now. 3. The next company announcement drawing turnover below its own 20-day median, which would continue the pattern in TABLE 01. 4. MACD crossing back above its signal line while the price is also above the 10-day average, which would say the short horizon has turned back up. THE OTHER WAY TO READ THIS The fall since 7 September may be an ordinary pullback inside an uptrend rather than the start of anything. The price is still above both the 50-day and the 200-day averages. The average daily range on Power Minerals, measured as the 20-day Average True Range on Wilder's smoothing, is 6.95 per cent of the price, and the two halted sessions in that window pull that figure down a little, so a move of 18.9 per cent covers only a few normal sessions. The MACD crossing is the kind of signal that measure produces when a price moves sideways, which its own literature warns about. On that reading nothing has happened except that the price came back towards its own averages. 9.00 THE SAMSO VIEW. Samso Concluding Comments The reader who looked at this chart and said it is going up was reading the long measures, and the long measures agree with them. The price is above a rising 200-day average and above the 50-day average, and ADX at 29.5 with +DI above -DI describes a real trend rather than a drift. The short measures do not agree, and they are measuring the same chart. The price is below its 10-day average, MACD crossed down on 9 September, RSI has come back from 67.8 to 46.2, and the price has given up 18.9 per cent since 7 September. The turnover figures are the part of this chart Samso finds most useful. A share price that keeps rising while each piece of news draws less trading than the one before is describing a market that is becoming harder to interest. That is a measurable thing and a reader can check it themselves on any stock, by taking the 20-day median volume and dividing each announcement day by it. SAMSO TAKE The two horizons on this chart disagree, and both of them are measurements rather than opinions. The long measures describe an uptrend that is still in place. The short measures describe a pullback inside it that started on 7 September. The turnover is where Samso would look next. Five drilling results landed between 31 July and 7 September, and each one drew less trading than the one before it. What would the next announcement have to do to break that pattern? VOCABULARY, IN PLAIN ENGLISH Moving average. The average closing price over a set number of trading days, recalculated each day. Exponential moving average. A moving average that gives more weight to the most recent days. ADX, Average Directional Index. A measure of how strongly a price is moving in one direction. Introduced by J. Welles Wilder in New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems in 1978, the book that also gave the market RSI and the Average True Range. +DI and -DI. Wilder's companion lines, measuring upward and downward movement. RSI, Relative Strength Index. Compares the size of recent gains against recent falls, on a scale of 0 to 100. Also Wilder, 1978. MACD. The gap between a 12-day and a 26-day exponential average, compared against its own 9-day average. Credited to Gerald Appel, an American money manager and newsletter writer, who set it out in his own booklet, The Moving Average Convergence-Divergence Trading Method, in the late 1970s. ATR, Average True Range. The average size of a daily price range, used to describe how wide the normal day is. Median volume. The middle value of a set of daily volumes once sorted, used instead of an average so one very large day does not distort it. Trading halt. A pause in trading requested by a company. The chart draws it as a flat line with no turnover. Cleansing notice. A notice lodged with the ASX when new shares are issued, allowing them to be traded. The Samso Way – Seek the Research Here at Samso, we pride ourselves on delivering content for investors that is independent and informed by over three decades of experience in the industry. Our content is well-researched and is only created if I see merit in discussing the company's story. Our mission is simple. Cut through the noise and spotlight what matters. Genuine stories, grounded insights, and real opportunity. 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Coffee with Samso, Samso Insights, Samso News and Samso Research are four ways into the same work. Interviews, long-form research, short takes on announcements and company-specific studies. Every one of them is about how to think about investing rather than what to buy. Samso News | www.samso.com.au | An Investor Lens on ASX-Listed Companies Samso News is independent research commentary for general information only. Nothing in this article is financial product advice, and it does not take into account any reader's objectives, financial situation or needs. Figures are drawn from public sources believed reliable at the stated dates but are not guaranteed. Market-sensitive numbers change daily. Samso or associated parties may hold positions in, or have commercial arrangements with, companies mentioned. Seek professional advice before making investment decisions. © Samso 2026 · samso.com.au

Rimfire Pacific Mining (ASX: RIM) has reported the first measured results from the long-term acid leach tests on its Murga scandium deposit in the Fifield district of central New South Wales. After 15 weeks, 22.7 per cent of the scandium had come out of the saprolite sample and 15.2 per cent out of the laterite sample [R1]. These are the two weathered clay layers that hold the scandium. The company projects at least 60 per cent and 30 per cent if the same rate holds for a year. Our piece of 30 September said we would read this release for the measured recovery. Samso has followed Rimfire since April 2026, and the earlier posts are listed after the Samso Concluding Comments. THE SOURCE DOCUMENT Rimfire Pacific Mining Limited, "Strong Scandium Recoveries Support Lower-Capital Processing Pathway at Murga", ASX announcement, 8 October 2026, 15 pages, authorised for release by the Board. It is on the ASX announcements page for RIM [R1]. Announcement Rimfire is testing whether the scandium at Murga can be dissolved out of the rock with acid at ordinary air pressure. The industry calls this atmospheric leaching. Rimfire says the other scandium deposits in the Fifield district are contemplating High Pressure Acid Leaching, or HPAL. That route does the same job inside a heated pressure vessel called an autoclave, and the company describes it as more complex and more capital-intensive [R1]. The test in this release is what we call a bottle roll (PLATE 01). Finely ground rock and acid are turned in a sealed bottle on rollers. It is a low-cost first look at how much metal will dissolve. Simulus, a specialist metallurgical laboratory, is running two bottles at room temperature. One holds 0.74 kilograms of saprolite and the other 1 kilogram of laterite. Laterite is the upper, most weathered layer and saprolite is below it. Both samples came from one diamond drillhole, FI2679. A diamond drillhole brings up a solid cylinder of rock called core [R1]. Highlights The measured recoveries are 22.7 per cent for saprolite and 15.2 per cent for laterite (TABLE 01). Recovery is the share of the scandium in the sample that has moved into the acid solution. Metallurgists would call it extraction, because the scandium is in solution and has not yet been made into a product. The bottles are still turning [R1]. The acid used so far is 0.34 tonnes for each tonne of saprolite and 0.23 tonnes for each tonne of laterite. Rimfire says that is considered low for atmospheric leaching. The laboratory tops the acid up to a set strength as the test runs. The release does not say if the figure counts all the acid added or only what the rock has consumed [R1]. The solution from the saprolite bottle carries 2.24 milligrams of scandium for every gram of iron. Rimfire says this ratio is high compared with atmospheric leaching of other scandium ores. It matters because iron and scandium behave alike in the purification steps that follow, and too much iron makes the scandium harder and more costly to separate [R1]. The release gives no figure for those other ores. The laterite gave up less scandium. The company's explanation is that calcium, manganese and magnesium in the laterite may be using up acid that would otherwise work on the scandium [R1]. The 52-Week Projection for Murga Scandium The 60 per cent and 30 per cent figures are projections. Rimfire drew a straight line of best fit through the weekly readings, left out the fast extraction at the start, and extended the line to 52 weeks (FIG. 01 and FIG. 02). Rimfire states that the projected recoveries hold if the same rate of extraction is maintained for the whole 52 weeks [R1]. Rimfire says the longer period is justified because commercial heap leaching of similar laterites takes 100 to 400 days, or longer. A heap leach trickles acid through a large pile of crushed ore on a lined pad. The release cites papers on heap leach projects at Murrin Murrin in Western Australia and Çaldağ in Turkey. It says they confirm saprolite ores achieve 70 to 80 per cent extraction over extended leaching periods, and that heap leaching of saprolite shows a roughly linear response [R1]. We did some simple arithmetic on the company's numbers (FIG. 03). To get from 22.7 per cent at week 15 to 60 per cent at week 52, the saprolite has to keep giving up about one percentage point of its scandium every week for another 37 weeks. The laterite needs about 0.4 of a point a week. On the company's saprolite chart, the week 15 reading is a little below week 14. The release does not comment on that, and one reading does not set a trend. The projection has also changed since June. The June release, read with the August clarification, pointed to 60 to 90 per cent if the early rate held out to 200 days [R3][R4]. Today's figures are at least 60 per cent for saprolite and 30 per cent for laterite at 52 weeks, which is 364 days. The August clarification gave the commercial heap leach period as 100 to 250 days, and today's release gives 100 to 400 days [R1][R4]. Both sets of figures are quoted here as published. The September release described these bottle rolls as tests of 160 to 180 days [R5]. Today's release does not say if they will run for the full 52 weeks. Qualifications and Open Questions The two samples weigh less than 2 kilograms together and come from one drillhole. The Murga resource is 56.1 million tonnes at 138 parts per million scandium, which is 138 grams in each tonne of rock. All of it is Inferred, the lowest confidence category of Mineral Resource under the JORC Code, the Australian reporting standard [R2]. The top interval of FI2679 grades 248 parts per million [R1]. The release does not give the grade of the two test samples or the depths they came from. The rock in the bottles was pulverised, which means ground to a powder. A heap uses much coarser crushed rock, which is harder to leach. The column tests at Electric Metals, a processing facility in the Philippines, are the ones that imitate a heap. They use saprolite only and run for about 30 days [R5]. The acid figures are at 15 weeks, with less than a quarter of the scandium out, and acid use will keep rising as the bottles keep turning. For comparison, Srećko Stanković and co-authors reviewed the processing of nickel laterite ores in the journal Metals in 2022. They put heap leaching at 200 to 500 kilograms of acid per tonne of ore for nickel recoveries of 65 to 85 per cent [R6]. Rimfire's 340 and 230 kilograms are already inside that range, with most of the scandium still in the rock. The same review puts atmospheric tank leaching at 600 to 800 kilograms a tonne [R6]. It covers nickel ores, so the comparison is a rough guide only. The release gives no capital cost, no operating cost and no date for the desktop financial study, which is a first estimate of costs made from test data. The release also restates that Murga is on the Fifield Project, where partner Golden Plains Resources can earn a 50.1 per cent interest [R1]. Leadership Commentary Executive Chair Bronwyn Barnes said the scandium recoveries at the end of 15 weeks "are highly encouraging". She said the deposit's low-iron host rocks "represent a potential gamechanger when compared to the other deposits in the area" [R1]. She also said scandium demand is accelerating across advanced manufacturing, AI data centres, defence and aerospace. The release gives no figures for that. Scandium News Since Our Last Rimfire Piece Our last Rimfire piece went out on 30 September 2026. This is what has happened in scandium since then. The company next door plans to become a US company. On 2 October, Sunrise Energy Metals (ASX: SRL) said it had signed a deed to move its domicile to the United States, with its main listing on Nasdaq and a secondary listing on the ASX. Sunrise owns the Syerston scandium deposit next to Murga. The plan needs shareholder, court and regulator approvals, and the indicative timetable has it completed in December 2026 [R7]. Sunrise already holds a conditional loan commitment of up to US$400 million from the US Office of Strategic Capital, announced in August [R8]. China has required an export licence for scandium since April 2025. The US Geological Survey recorded that rule as still in effect at December 2025, and a Tech Times report of 6 October 2026 says it was never suspended [R9][R11]. The wider trade truce between the US and China was extended to 10 January 2027, which China's commerce ministry confirmed on 28 September. The reports we read differ on how much of China's October 2025 rare earth controls that extension covers. Scandium Canada (TSXV: SCD) reported a drill hole on 7 October of 150.1 metres at 292 parts per million scandium oxide. The hole is about 150 metres north of its Crater Lake resource in Quebec [R10]. That is one drill intercept and not a resource grade. Murga's resource averages 212 parts per million as scandium oxide, the form scandium is sold in [R2]. Geopolitics, Economics and Rimfire Scandium is a very small market. The US Geological Survey estimates the world used about 60 tonnes of scandium oxide in 2025 and produced about 80 tonnes. It names China as the leading producer and says the United States imported all of its supply [R11]. Government support has been offered to a project in Rimfire's district (TABLE 02). The US loan commitment to Syerston is conditional. The NSW Government named Syerston in July as one of the first two projects in its critical minerals royalty deferral scheme, which defers a new mine's state royalties for five years [R8][R12]. Rimfire receives none of it. Rimfire could gain a funded neighbour with a plant, which could become a partner or a customer. That is our view, and no release says any such talks exist. Scandium costs far less inside China than outside it. Inside China, Shanghai Metals Market assessed scandium oxide at about US$592 a kilogram on 30 September 2026 [R13]. Outside China, Sunrise's feasibility study assumes US$3,000 a kilogram in its economic analysis and US$1,500 for its Ore Reserve. The US defence stockpile planned to buy 6.4 tonnes from Rio Tinto over five years for up to US$40 million, which is up to about US$6,250 a kilogram by our arithmetic [R14][R15]. In our view the gap reflects what Western buyers will pay for supply that needs no Chinese export licence. It helps projects outside China while the licensing rules stay. The Chinese price has been falling. The US Geological Survey puts scandium oxide at US$890 to US$1,000 a kilogram in 2021 and about US$640 in 2025 [R11]. A lower price cuts what a producer earns on each kilogram. It can also bring scandium closer to being affordable for the aluminium industry, which has never used it at scale because of its cost. Our August Insight on the scandium price looked at that idea. It treated the idea as a possibility that the numbers do not yet show. The Reserve Bank of Australia raised its cash rate to 4.60 per cent on 29 September 2026, the fourth rise this year [R16]. Higher rates make construction debt cost more, which in our view favours a cheaper plant. Sunrise's March study put the Syerston plant at about US$120 million for 60 tonnes of oxide a year, using pressure leaching. News reports in August gave a revised A$450 million to A$475 million on a wider scope that includes a US refinery [R14]. Rimfire says an atmospheric route would be less complex and less capital-intensive [R1]. No Murga plant has been costed, so that is still to be tested. Sulphuric acid has become dearer. S&P Global reported acid delivered to the US Gulf at US$400 a tonne in May 2026, up from US$155 in February. It put that down to supply disruption in the Middle East and new Chinese limits on acid exports [R17]. We have no price after May. An ore that uses less acid is less exposed to that price, and Rimfire describes its acid use so far as low [R1]. Rimfire is a small company. It had A$583,770 in cash at 30 June 2026, and the going concern note in its annual report states a material uncertainty. That means it needs to raise more money to keep paying its bills. A placement in August, which is a sale of new shares to selected investors, brought in A$1.6 million after costs. A further A$0.6 million is subject to shareholder approval at a meeting in November [R18]. At 1.1 cents on 7 October, the company's market value was about A$33 million by our arithmetic [R19]. Good metallurgy can help the next raise to be priced higher. Near-term Milestones to Watch Early November 2026. Update on the column leach tests, which drip acid through crushed rock in a pipe. November 2026. General meeting to approve the rest of the August placement. Late November 2026. Update on the agitated tank leach tests, which stir ground ore with acid in a heated tank. Early December 2026. Next bottle roll update. 10 January 2027. The extended US and China trade truce ends. Samso Concluding Comments In our last piece we said we would read the October release for the measured recovery and not the projection. The measured numbers are 22.7 and 15.2 per cent at 15 weeks. The company's chart shows the saprolite readings rising along a fairly straight line. That is a better result than a curve that has flattened, and the December update will show if the line holds. It is also less than the June headline suggested. A reader who took 60 to 90 per cent in 200 days from the June release and its August clarification now has at least 60 per cent in a year for the saprolite and 30 per cent for the laterite. A year is near the long end of the 100 to 400 days Rimfire gives for commercial heap leaching. Some outside events help Rimfire. China's export rules for scandium are still in place, by the reports we read. The owner of the deposit next door has a conditional US loan commitment and plans a Nasdaq listing, which still needs approvals. These events do not change the metallurgy. They may matter if the tests succeed. SAMSO TAKE In my opinion this result keeps the low-iron story alive, and that is all a 15-week bottle roll can do. I like that the acid use and the scandium to iron ratio were reported with the recovery, because those two numbers drive the cost. The saprolite is the part of Murga to follow. What I want from the November column update is a recovery from crushed rock and not pulverised rock. Will the coarse rock give up its scandium at anything like the same rate? THE OTHER WAY TO READ THIS A more cautious reading is that less than a quarter of the scandium has come out in 15 weeks, from under 2 kilograms of pulverised rock from one hole. The 60 per cent figure needs the line to stay straight for another 37 weeks, and the laterite is projected at 30 per cent. The market Rimfire wants to sell into used about 60 tonnes in 2025. Syerston alone plans to make 60 tonnes a year [R11][R14]. On that view, the geopolitics helps the first project built and may leave less room for the second. Previous Samso Coverage of Rimfire Pacific Mining Every earlier Samso post on Rimfire, newest first, followed by the two Samso Insights on the scandium market. 30 SEP 2026. Rimfire Pacific Mining (ASX: RIM) - Murga Scandium Study Adds Column and Tank Leach Tests. The study grows from one type of test to three, with a timetable for each. 11 AUG 2026. Rimfire Pacific Mining (ASX:RIM) Strengthens Leadership as Scandium Strategy Advances. Bronwyn Barnes becomes Executive Chair alongside a capital raising. 30 JUN 2026. Rimfire Pacific Mining: Murga's Low-Iron Scandium Points to a Cheaper Route. The first 14-day bottle roll results and the 60 to 90 per cent projection, before the August clarification. 15 JUN 2026. Rimfire Pacific Mining Limited (ASX: RIM) to Secure 60% of Avondale Scandium Project as Seismic Survey Kicks Off at Fifield. Rimfire moves to 60 per cent of Avondale and a seismic survey begins. 14 MAY 2026. Rimfire Pacific Mining Limited - Fifield District Scandium Resource Builder Investigating Lower-Cost Leaching Pathway at Murga. The low-iron argument and the start of the metallurgical study. 14 APR 2026. Rimfire Pacific Mining Limited - Murga Scandium Mineral Resource Increases. The 56.1 million tonne Murga Inferred resource. 28 AUG 2026. The Scandium Market in 2026 - Does a lower scandium price make the investment case stronger? Samso Insight on scandium prices and demand. 6 APR 2026. The Scandium Story - A Small-Market Metal with Outsized Leverage in Lightweight Alloys and Clean-Energy Ceramics. Samso Insight on where scandium comes from and what it is used for. THE VOCABULARY, IN PLAIN ENGLISH Scandium and scandium oxide Scandium is a light metal used mainly to strengthen aluminium alloys and in solid oxide fuel cells. It is usually sold as scandium oxide. Parts per million (ppm) Grams per tonne. 138 ppm scandium means about 138 grams of scandium in each tonne of rock. Laterite and saprolite Layers formed near the surface when rock weathers over a very long time. Laterite is the upper, most weathered layer. Saprolite is below it and still shows the texture of the original rock. Recovery The share of the metal in a sample that the test gets out. A recovery of 22.7 per cent means 22.7 per cent of the scandium moved into the acid solution. Bottle roll test Finely ground rock and acid turned in a sealed bottle on rollers. A low-cost first test of how much metal dissolves and how fast. Atmospheric leaching Dissolving metal out of ore at ordinary air pressure, in a heap, a vat or an open tank. HPAL High Pressure Acid Leaching. Dissolving ore in acid inside a heated pressure vessel called an autoclave. Heap leach Recovering metal by trickling acid through a large pile of crushed ore on a lined pad. Column leach and agitated tank leach A column test drips acid through crushed rock in a vertical pipe to imitate a heap. A tank test stirs finely ground ore with acid in a heated tank. Line of best fit A straight line drawn through a set of readings so that it is as close as possible to all of them. Extending it past the last reading is a projection and not a measurement. Pregnant leach solution The acid solution after it has dissolved metal out of the rock. The metal is recovered from it in later steps. Scandium to iron ratio How much scandium the solution holds for each gram of iron. A higher ratio means less iron to remove before the scandium can be purified. Mineral Resource, Inferred An estimate of how much metal is in the ground. Inferred is the lowest confidence level under the JORC Code and rests on limited drilling. Earn-in An agreement where a partner gains a share of a project by spending money on it. Export licensing A rule that a product cannot leave a country without a government permit. China has applied one to scandium since April 2025. Going concern The accounting assumption that a company can pay its bills for the next 12 months. A material uncertainty means that depends on raising more money. References and sources Each source carries an identifier and the same identifier appears in the text where that source is used. Company figures are quoted as published at the dates given. FIG. 01, FIG. 02 and PLATE 01 are reproduced from Rimfire's public ASX release of 8 October 2026. FIG. 03 is an original Samso chart built only from company figures. TABLE 01 and TABLE 02 are Samso tables. Sources [R6] to [R17] and [R20] were read on 8 October 2026. Where a figure comes from a news report of a company document, the reference says so. [R1] Rimfire Pacific Mining Limited (ASX: RIM), "Strong Scandium Recoveries Support Lower-Capital Processing Pathway at Murga", ASX announcement, 8 October 2026. [R2] Rimfire Pacific Mining Limited, "Murga Scandium MRE increases by 300%", ASX announcement, 13 April 2026. announcements.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20260413/pdf/06ydvt2jy8w85w.pdf [R3] Rimfire Pacific Mining Limited, "Strong Encouragement from Initial Murga Scandium Metallurgical Study", ASX announcement, 23 June 2026. announcements.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20260623/pdf/070x61qrd7tb4z.pdf [R4] Rimfire Pacific Mining Limited, "Clarification to ASX announcement released on 23 June 2026", ASX announcement, 13 August 2026. announcements.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20260813/pdf/072qfvzhc27qdv.pdf [R5] Rimfire Pacific Mining Limited, "Rimfire accelerates Murga scandium pathway with expanded metallurgical study", ASX announcement, 28 September 2026. announcements.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20260928/pdf/074lfz2tb01bgx.pdf [R6] Stanković, S. and co-authors (2022), "Options for Hydrometallurgical Treatment of Ni-Co Lateritic Ores for Sustainable Supply of Nickel and Cobalt for European Battery Industry from South-Eastern Europe and Turkey", Metals, volume 12, issue 5, article 807. doi.org/10.3390/met12050807 [R7] Sunrise Energy Metals Limited (ASX: SRL), "Redomicile to the US and progress on Nasdaq listing", ASX announcement, 2 October 2026. ASX announcement. Also Reuters, "Australia's Sunrise Energy Metals plans US redomicile, primary Nasdaq listing", 2 October 2026, as carried by Investing.com. [R8] Mining.com, "Sunrise Energy Metals scandium project gets $400M conditional loan from US Department of War", August 2026. mining.com. Also Al Jazeera, "US announces $400m investment in Australian rare earth mine", 8 August 2026. [R9] Rawmaterials.net, "Rare earth export controls: China confirms extension of trade arrangements with U.S.", 28 September 2026. rawmaterials.net. Tech Times, "Congress Moves to Break China Rare Earth Grip Before November Deadline", 6 October 2026. Startup Fortune, 8 October 2026. US Geological Survey [R11] for the April 2025 controls remaining in effect at December 2025. [R10] Scandium Canada Ltd, "Scandium Canada Finds More Scandium Outside Current Crater Lake Resource", news release, 7 October 2026, as carried by StockTitan. stocktitan.net. Downhole length, true thickness not determined. [R11] US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, Scandium. pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2026/mcs2026-scandium.pdf [R12] NSW Government, "Two major NSW critical minerals projects to benefit from Australia-first royalty deferral scheme", ministerial release, July 2026. nsw.gov.au [R13] Shanghai Metals Market, scandium oxide price assessment, 30 September 2026, 4,500 yuan a kilogram, shown by SMM as US$592.1 excluding VAT. metal.com [R14] Sunrise Energy Metals Limited (ASX: SRL), Syerston Scandium Project feasibility study, ASX announcement, 3 March 2026. ASX announcement. News reports in August 2026 gave a revised estimate of A$450 million to A$475 million on a wider scope that includes a US refinery. [R15] Reuters, "US agency wants to buy scandium oxide from Rio Tinto for defence stockpile", 22 September 2025, as carried by Mining.com. mining.com. The purchase is over five years. The price per kilogram is Samso arithmetic. [R16] Commonwealth Bank newsroom, report of the RBA cash rate decision of 29 September 2026, published 30 September 2026. commbank.com.au [R17] S&P Global, "Global sulfur prices surge on Middle East disruptions, China export ban", 7 May 2026. spglobal.com [R18] Rimfire Pacific Mining Limited, 2026 Annual Report to Shareholders, lodged with the ASX on 30 September 2026. [R19] ASX market data for RIM, read 8 October 2026 before the open. Last price A$0.011 on 7 October 2026 and 2,999,138,802 shares on issue. Market value is Samso arithmetic. [R20] Mining Weekly, "Flemington scandium project, Australia, update", 31 July 2026. miningweekly.com. Source for the Flemington row of TABLE 02. The cover photograph shows a bottle roll test on Murga samples, from Rimfire Pacific Mining Limited, ASX announcement of 8 October 2026, Figure 5. Cropped by Samso. 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US interest rates are rising again. The Federal Reserve raised its policy rate on 16 September 2026 and the 10-year Treasury yield passed 5 per cent, while China's factory prices, its currency and the price of its exports all turned up. Oil is still the larger driver of US inflation. The eight market series, what the data says, and what it means for an ASX investor. The US Federal Reserve raised its policy rate on 16 September 2026, the first rise since 2023. Two weeks later, on 30 September, the US 10-year Treasury yield closed at 5.29 per cent, its highest close since May 2002. A bond yield is the annual return for lending money to a government, and the US 10-year yield is the reference price for money around the world. Those two numbers feed into the price of most Australian assets, from the Australian dollar to a gold explorer's share price. This is the first Global Markets edition from Samso, and Part 3 of the China series. For most of the last three years China sold its goods to the world at falling prices, which tended to hold down goods inflation in the countries that bought them. In 2026 China's factory prices turned positive in March, its currency, the yuan, has strengthened, and the price the US pays for Chinese goods is now rising. Oil is still the larger force behind US inflation, and goods from China are rising more slowly than US imports as a whole. A NOTE ON THE VOCABULARY AND THE REFERENCES Every market term in this piece is explained in plain English where it first appears. The same terms are collected in one box at the back, above the references, for anyone who wants to look one up again. Each source carries an identifier, [R1] to [R32]. The identifier appears in the text where the source is used and again at the head of its entry in the reference list, so any number can be traced to the document behind it. In the online version the identifier is a link. The cover photograph is credited at [R32]. READING THE SERIES Part 1. Japan Took 30 Years to Recover. China May Not Get the Same Chance. The macro case. Japan's precedent, China's property crisis, its debt, its falling population and the tension between AI and jobs. Part 2. China Is Slowing. The Money Went to What China Controls. Where the capital went. Iron ore against tungsten, tin and copper, and the ASX and TSX producers on either side of China's role in each market. Part 3. This piece. China's part in US interest rates and global inflation, read through the eight market series. WHAT THIS PIECE COVERS 1.00 What moved this fortnight The eight series, their latest values and the change over two weeks. 2.00 The Federal Reserve decision What the Fed did on 16 September, what a bond yield is, and what the committee expects next. 3.00 Why the US 10-year is above 5 per cent The yield split into its real and inflation parts, and which part did the rising. 4.00 Oil and the inflation numbers Brent crude, the Strait of Hormuz and the gap between headline and core inflation. 5.00 China's factory prices turn positive China's producer prices and what the US now pays for Chinese goods. 6.00 The yuan How a stronger Chinese currency feeds into the price of goods abroad. 7.00 China's oil stockpiles and US Treasury holdings Two other ways China reaches US rates, and what the data does and does not show. 8.00 What the market is arguing about Three claims from the commentary this fortnight, checked against the numbers. 9.00 Reading the charts A walk through six charts, what each one has done and the pathways it allows. 10.00 What it means for an ASX investor The yield spread, the Australian dollar, the RBA and the resources sector. 11.00 Samso Take Samso view. 1.00 — WHAT MOVED THIS FORTNIGHT Eight market series and their two-week change Samso follows the same eight market series every fortnight, in the same order, so the edition can be read the same way each time. Table 01 gives the latest value of each and the value two weeks earlier. FIG. 01, after the table, shows the last twelve months of each series. The US 10-year yield rose 0.30 percentage points in two weeks [R4]. The Australian 10-year was flat [R9], so the gap between the two narrowed to almost nothing. The Australian dollar fell 2.6 per cent against the US dollar, copper slipped and gold fell 5.9 per cent [R20]. Spot Brent came down from a spike in mid-September to US$113.96 [R7]. The ASX 200 is now slightly below where it started the year, while the S&P 500 is more than 12 per cent above it [R22]. The two bond yields describe the price of borrowing money for ten years in each country. AUD/USD is how many US dollars one Australian dollar buys, and it tends to move with the spread. Brent is the price of oil, which runs into fuel, freight and mining costs. Copper is read as a measure of industrial demand. Gold is bought as a store of value in uncertain times, and it tends to fall when real interest rates rise, as section 3.00 explains. The two share indices show whether the ASX is keeping pace with the US market. 2.00 — THE FEDERAL RESERVE DECISION The first US rate rise since 2023 The Federal Reserve is the US central bank. Its Federal Open Market Committee, the FOMC, sets the federal funds rate, which is the rate banks charge each other to borrow overnight. Almost every other interest rate in the US economy is priced off it. PLATE 01 shows the building in Washington where the committee meets [R31]. On 16 September 2026 the committee voted 12 to 0 to raise the target range by a quarter of a percentage point, to 3.75 to 4.00 per cent [R1]. Its statement described economic activity as expanding at a solid pace and said that "Inflation remains elevated." It said the rise supports "a timelier return to the Committee's 2 percent goal" [R1]. The committee also published its Summary of Economic Projections, the forecasts each member makes each quarter. The median member expects the federal funds rate to finish 2026 at 4.1 per cent [R2]. The midpoint of the current range is 3.875 per cent, so a finish at 4.1 per cent implies one more quarter-point rise before the end of the year. The median expects the rate to stay at 4.1 per cent through 2027. That is Samso's reading of the published median, not a statement the committee made. The same projections put the committee's preferred inflation measure, the personal consumption expenditures price index or PCE, at 3.7 per cent for 2026 and 2.3 per cent for 2027 [R2]. In June the median member had expected the funds rate to finish 2026 at 3.8 per cent [R2]. At the press conference the Chair, Kevin Warsh, declined to say where rates go next. "I'm not in the forward guidance business," he said [R3]. He also said the Fed cannot affect any individual price such as oil or food, and that its job is to stop a rise in those prices spreading into everything else [R3]. The transcript published by the Fed carries no mention of China. A bond is a loan to a government or a company. The yield is the annual return the lender earns for making it. When buyers demand a higher return to hold a bond, its price falls and its yield rises. A US Treasury is a loan to the US government. Mortgages, company loans and the value of shares are all priced with reference to its yield. FIG. 02 sets the federal funds rate against the 2-year and 10-year Treasury yields. The 2-year yield trades mostly on where the market expects the Fed to take its rate over the next two years. It rose from 3.38 per cent at the end of February to 4.67 per cent on 15 September, the day before the decision, and was 4.78 per cent on 1 October [R4]. The market had priced the rise before the committee made it. The yield curve is the line of yields across different terms, and its slope here is the 10-year yield minus the 2-year yield. On 2 October it was 0.45 percentage points [R4]. A positive slope means investors want more to lend for ten years than for two. For most of 2023 and 2024 the slope was negative, which means the 2-year yield was above the 10-year. 3.00 — WHY THE US 10-YEAR IS ABOVE 5 PER CENT Real yields drove most of the rise A nominal yield is the one quoted on the screen. It can be split into two parts. The first is the real yield, which is the return after inflation. The second is breakeven inflation, which is the rate of inflation the bond market expects over the life of the bond. Both parts can be read from the market. The US government issues Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, called TIPS, whose repayments rise with inflation. The yield on a TIPS bond is the real yield. The gap between an ordinary Treasury yield and a TIPS yield of the same term is the breakeven inflation rate [R5]. FIG. 03 shows the split since the start of 2024. The US 10-year yield rose from 3.97 per cent on 27 February 2026 to 5.24 per cent on 1 October, a rise of 1.27 percentage points [R4]. Over the same dates the 10-year real yield rose from 1.72 to 2.88 per cent, which is 1.16 points. The 10-year breakeven moved from 2.25 to 2.36 per cent, which is 0.11 points [R5]. On those figures about nine tenths of the rise in the 10-year yield came from the real yield. That is Samso's arithmetic. FRED builds the breakeven series as the nominal yield minus the real yield, so the two parts add up to the nominal yield exactly. The bond market's long-run inflation expectation has barely moved, and at 2.36 per cent on 2 October it is close to its level for most of the last three years [R5]. The rise came from the real yield, the return investors want for lending money after inflation. It reached 2.93 per cent on 30 September, the highest on this chart, and was 2.88 per cent on 1 October. There are several reasons a real yield rises. Investors may expect the Fed to hold rates high for longer. They may want more compensation for the uncertainty of lending for ten years, which is called the term premium. Or there may be more government bonds to buy than buyers at the old price. FIG. 03 cannot separate these causes. It shows that most of the 2026 rise in the 10-year yield is in the real yield, and that inflation expectations have barely moved. 4.00 — OIL AND THE INFLATION NUMBERS An oil shock in the headline number, not yet in the core Brent crude is the main global oil benchmark. It is priced in US dollars and it feeds into fuel, freight, fertiliser and the running costs of most mines and farms. That is why it shows up in the cost base of companies that have nothing to do with oil. Brent spot opened 2026 at about US$62 a barrel. It rose to US$138.21 on 7 April and was US$113.96 on 29 September [R7]. The rise followed the start of the conflict with Iran in early 2026 [R16]. The US Energy Information Administration, the EIA, says flows through the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb strait remain constrained. Oil production that is shut in has been stopped at the well because it cannot be shipped. In its September outlook the EIA put that at 6.7 million barrels a day in August and expected an average of 5.7 million a day in the fourth quarter of 2026 [R15]. There are two Brent prices in this piece and they differ. The spot price is what a cargo of oil sells for now. The futures price is an agreement today on the price of oil delivered in a later month. On 2 October the front-month Brent future closed at US$102.25 [R20], well below the spot price three days earlier. When oil for delivery now costs more than oil for delivery later, the market is paying a premium for barrels it can get immediately. Traders call this backwardation. It usually means buyers are short of oil now. FIG. 04 sets US consumer prices against the oil price. The consumer price index, the CPI, measures the change in the price of a basket of goods and services. The headline rate includes everything. The core rate leaves out food and energy, which move most, to show the underlying trend. US headline CPI inflation rose from 2.66 per cent in February 2026 to 4.27 per cent in May, then eased to 3.71 per cent in August. Core inflation was 2.76 per cent in August and has stayed between 2.67 and 2.99 per cent all year. Both rates are Samso's calculation from the Bureau of Labor Statistics index levels [R6]. The Fed's preferred core measure, core PCE, was higher at 3.0 per cent in August [R6]. On Samso's reading of the gap between the two rates, the oil shock is in the headline number and has not yet spread into the core. That spread is what Chair Warsh said the Fed exists to prevent [R3]. Samso reads the September rise as the committee acting before it happens. The EIA expects Brent to average about US$90 a barrel in the second half of 2026, US$77 in the second quarter of 2027 and US$67 in the second half of 2027. The EIA expects this as production restarts and stockpiles are rebuilt [R15]. That forecast rests on flows recovering gradually through pipelines and other routes. Spot Brent is already well above the EIA's second-half average. Australia is in the same position. The ABS monthly CPI showed prices up 4.0 per cent in the year to August, from 3.5 per cent in July, with a trimmed mean of 3.6 per cent [R10]. A trimmed mean is the RBA's preferred underlying measure. It drops the items with the largest rises and falls each month and averages the rest. Automotive fuel rose 14.8 per cent in August alone, after 7.5 per cent in July [R10]. The Reserve Bank of Australia, the RBA, sets the cash rate, Australia's equivalent of the federal funds rate. It raised the cash rate in February, March and May 2026, and again on 29 September, to 4.60 per cent [R23]. 5.00 — CHINA'S FACTORY PRICES TURN POSITIVE China's factory prices are rising, led by energy and raw materials A producer price index, the PPI, measures the prices factories receive for what they make, before any retailer adds a margin. China's National Bureau of Statistics publishes one every month. For most of the three years to early 2026 China's PPI fell year on year. China Daily reported that the March 2026 figure ended 41 months of decline [R24], which is a report of the count rather than a figure Samso has checked at source. Falling factory prices in China meant buyers abroad could pay less each year for many manufactured goods. Economists often describe this as China exporting deflation. The US import price index in FIG. 05 shows the effect in the price the US paid. Part 1 of this series set out why China's economy produced that result, in its property crisis, its debt and its falling population. PLATE 02 shows one end of that trade, the Yangshan container terminal at the Port of Shanghai. FIG. 05 shows what changed in 2026. China's PPI was minus 0.9 per cent in February and turned positive in March at 0.5 per cent. It reached 4.1 per cent in June and was 3.8 per cent in August [R12]. The NBS breakdown for August shows where the rises are. Mining and quarrying prices were up 17.8 per cent on a year earlier, coal mining up 26.6 per cent and petroleum and natural gas up 10.5 per cent. Consumer goods prices were still down 0.5 per cent [R12]. Much of the turn is therefore energy and raw materials coming through China's factories, not a broad rise in the price of what China sells to households. The US side of the trade is measured directly. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes an index of the prices the US pays for imports from China. On Samso's calculation from that index, prices of goods from China fell 3.4 per cent in the year to August 2025. They rose 3.1 per cent in the year to August 2026, the fastest rise since mid-2022 [R13]. Prices of all US imports rose 6.8 per cent over the same year, so goods from China are still rising more slowly than imports as a whole. Consumers in China are not yet seeing much of it. China's CPI rose 0.8 per cent in the year to August and core CPI 1.0 per cent [R11]. Those are low numbers by the standard of most large economies. The pressure is at the factory gate and in the export price, which is where it reaches the rest of the world first. On the BLS index, goods from China are no longer getting cheaper for US buyers. They are getting dearer, more slowly than imports from elsewhere. 6.00 — THE YUAN A stronger yuan raises the dollar price of Chinese goods The price the US pays for a Chinese good depends on two things, the factory price in yuan and the exchange rate. The yuan has been rising. FIG. 06 shows it at 7.30 to the US dollar at the end of 2024 and 6.71 on 25 September 2026 [R8]. On Samso's arithmetic that is a strengthening of about 9 per cent. A 9 per cent stronger yuan means a Chinese exporter who keeps its yuan price unchanged is charging an American buyer about 9 per cent more in dollars. Exporters can absorb some of that in their margins, which may be one reason US import prices from China have risen by less. The Bank of Finland's Institute for Emerging Economies, BOFIT, tracks the yuan closely. In May it said the currency had strengthened 3 per cent against the dollar in 2026. It put that down to strong exports, a large current account surplus and a weaker US dollar at the time [R17]. A current account surplus means China earns more from the rest of the world than it pays out. It also said the People's Bank of China manages the rate through a daily reference rate with a band of 2 per cent either side, and through guidance to state-owned banks. BOFIT cited an estimate from the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, that China's real effective exchange rate was undervalued by 12 to 21 per cent in 2025 [R17]. That is as reported by BOFIT rather than read from the IMF document. A real effective exchange rate measures a currency against a basket of trading partners, adjusted for inflation. If that estimate is close, the yuan could rise further before reaching what the IMF considers fair value, and each step would add to the dollar price of Chinese goods. Whether Beijing lets it rise is a policy decision. BOFIT notes that the PBoC has tools to slow the yuan's gains, and cites a February change that made it cheaper for banks to buy dollars forward [R17]. 7.00 — CHINA'S OIL STOCKPILES AND US TREASURY HOLDINGS China's oil reserves and its US Treasury holdings China reaches US interest rates in two more ways. The first is oil. Alicia García-Herrero at the Brussels think tank Bruegel wrote in March that about half of China's crude imports come through the Persian Gulf. She put China's strategic and commercial reserves at roughly 1.3 to 1.4 billion barrels, about four months of imports [R16]. She also reported that China's crude imports rose 16 per cent in January and February 2026 as it built stocks ahead of the conflict [R16]. A buyer with four months of stock can stop buying for a while. When China draws down its reserves instead of buying cargoes, it takes demand out of a tight market and holds the price down for everyone else. When it starts buying again, it adds that demand back. China's monthly customs figures for crude imports could not be read at source for this piece, so Samso has not stated what China bought in September. Through that mechanism China's stockpile decisions feed into the oil price, and the oil price feeds into US headline inflation, which the Fed is responding to. The second channel is the US bond market itself. The US Treasury records who holds its debt through the Treasury International Capital system, called TIC. FIG. 07 shows mainland China's recorded holdings. China held US$1,316.7 billion of Treasuries at its peak in November 2013. In July 2026 it held US$618.0 billion, down US$77.6 billion on a year earlier [R14]. Total foreign holdings were US$9,248.1 billion in July 2026, up US$138.6 billion on a year earlier [R14]. Holdings recorded against the United Kingdom, Belgium and Luxembourg rose over the same year. There are limits to what these figures show. TIC records holdings by the country of the custodian, the bank that holds the bonds, so bonds China holds through an account in Belgium are recorded against Belgium. The recorded figure may understate China's real position. The data also does not show that China's selling has pushed US yields up. What it shows is that the largest foreign lender to the US government in 2013 now holds less than half as much, and that the US depends more on other buyers. THE CASE AGAINST CHINA AS THE DRIVER On the gap between headline and core inflation, oil has done more to lift US inflation in 2026 than China has, and the oil shock began with a war, not with Chinese policy. US core inflation has barely moved. Goods from China are also rising more slowly than US imports as a whole, 3.1 per cent against 6.8 per cent in the year to August [R13]. On that measure China is still pulling US import inflation down relative to other suppliers. China's producer prices also moved month to month. The index fell 0.7 per cent in July alone before rising again in August [R12]. A turn that is mostly energy and raw materials could reverse as quickly as it came if the straits reopen and oil falls towards the EIA's 2027 forecast. The rise in US yields is mostly the real yield. That has more to do with the Fed, the supply of US government debt and the term premium than with the price of goods from China. 8.00 — WHAT THE MARKET IS ARGUING ABOUT The 1970s comparison, the Fed's next move and China's role Three arguments ran through the financial commentary in the fortnight to 2 October. Each is set against the primary data below. The comparison with the 1970s The comparison is to a decade when an oil shock fed into wages and prices for years. The data does not support it yet. US core CPI is 2.76 per cent [R6]. The bond market's 10-year inflation expectation is 2.36 per cent [R5]. On the same BLS series, core inflation passed 10 per cent in 1974 and again in 1979 [R6]. Both periods had an oil shock and a central bank raising rates in response. In the 1970s the rise spread into core prices, which has not happened in 2026. Whether the Fed has further to go The committee's median puts the federal funds rate at 4.1 per cent at the end of 2026 and of 2027 [R2]. On Samso's reading that is one more quarter-point rise this year and none next year. The 2-year Treasury yield is 4.78 per cent [R4], above the 4.1 per cent path in the median projection. A 2-year yield above the expected policy path means the market is either pricing more rises than the committee expects, or asking for extra return to cover the uncertainty. The yield curve alone cannot say which. The Chair has declined to give guidance either way [R3]. Whether China is behind the inflation Some of this holds up. China's factory prices have turned positive, the yuan is stronger, and the US now pays more for goods from China than a year ago [R12] [R13]. But US import prices from China rose 3.1 per cent over the year while all US imports rose 6.8 per cent. China is no longer lowering US import prices, and its goods are rising less than imports overall. 9.00 — READING THE CHARTS What a technical trader sees on six charts Technical analysis reads what a price has done, rather than what a company or an economy is worth. Samso uses it to describe a chart, not to call a trade. Nothing in this section is a buy or sell signal, a target or a level to act on. FIG. 08 to FIG. 13 below run from March 2025 to 2 October 2026 and use daily closing prices from Yahoo Finance [R20]. Table 02, just below, adds measurements taken from the same prices on 2 October. The sections before this one set out the case that US real yields have risen, that oil is still the larger driver of inflation, and that China is no longer pushing goods prices down. The charts show whether markets have moved in line with that case. They cannot show on their own what caused the moves. Each chart below covers why it matters to the argument, what it shows and what it means for an Australian investor. Each chart shows the daily close with two moving averages. A moving average is the average closing price over a set number of recent trading days. Traders use the 200-day average to separate a long uptrend from a long downtrend, and the 50-day average to do the same over a few months. The dots mark the highs and lows the text walks through. A trader reads a chart first by those turning points. A run of higher highs and higher lows is an uptrend. A run of lower highs and lower lows is a downtrend. Highs and lows at about the same levels make a range. That definition comes from Dow Theory. Robert Edwards and John Magee set it out, with the classic chart patterns, in Technical Analysis of Stock Trends, 1948 [R25]. Table 02 sets out where each of the six charts stood on 2 October. The US 10-year yield, Brent and copper trade above a rising 200-day average. Gold and the ASX 200 trade below a flat one. The Australian dollar has fallen below a rising one. US 10-year yield The US 10-year yield is the reference price for money, so a change in it reaches share prices, the Australian dollar and commodity prices. The chart shows that the rise began in February 2026, well before the Fed raised its rate on 16 September. FIG. 08 shows the US 10-year yield. For most of 2025 it moved sideways between about 3.95 and 4.60 per cent, and its 200-day average was close to flat for the year. It made two lows at almost the same level, 3.95 per cent in October 2025 and 3.96 per cent on 27 February 2026. From the February low the yield rose to 4.44 per cent on 27 March and fell back to 4.25 per cent on 17 April. It rose to 4.67 per cent on 19 May and fell to 4.37 per cent on 26 June. It rose again to 4.74 per cent on 31 July, and after a dip to about 4.62 per cent in early August it passed 5 per cent in September. It closed at 5.29 per cent on 30 September and 5.28 per cent on 2 October. On the Federal Reserve's daily series the 30 September close was the highest since May 2002 [R4]. Every high since February has been above the one before, and every pullback has stopped above the last low. That is an uptrend on the Dow Theory definition. The averages show the same thing. The 50-day average crossed above the 200-day on 27 March, which traders call a golden cross, and both have been rising since June. The yield is 19 per cent above its 200-day average. Ed Seykota, interviewed in Jack Schwager's Market Wizards, 1989, is a long-term trend follower who trades in the direction of the trend [R29]. On this chart the price and both averages are rising. Table 02 adds two measures from J. Welles Wilder's New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems, 1978, the book that introduced RSI, ADX and the average true range [R26]. ADX, the Average Directional Index, measures whether a price is trending at all, whichever way. At 40.9 it is well above the 25 usually taken as a trend. RSI, the Relative Strength Index, compares recent gains with recent losses on a scale of 0 to 100. At 74.6 it is above the 70 Wilder called overbought. On a chart this directional, a high RSI describes how fast the move has been. It does not mean the move has to reverse. A technical trader would lay out two pathways. In the first, the pattern of higher lows continues and the next pullback stops above the early-August low. In the second, the yield falls below that low, which would be the first lower low since February and the first sign on this chart that the trend has changed. Section 3.00 is the fundamental side of this chart. The yield rose because real yields rose, and a change in real yields would show here. On this chart the bond market moved first and the Fed followed. The pullbacks have been shallow, and each has held above the last low. For an Australian investor, the US 10-year yield is at its highest in 24 years. Other assets, from bank shares to gold explorers, are priced against it, so a rising yield means investors ask a higher return of everything else. AUD/USD The Australian dollar affects an ASX investor in two ways. Most of what Australia exports is priced in US dollars, so a lower Australian dollar lifts an exporter's revenue in Australian dollars even when the commodity price has not moved. It also reflects how the market compares the RBA with the Fed. FIG. 09 shows the Australian dollar. The low on the chart is 59.6 US cents on 9 April 2025, a fall and recovery inside two weeks. For the rest of 2025 it traded between about 64 and 67 cents. In January 2026 it broke above that range and reached 71.3 cents in February. From February to September the chart was a range. The highs were 71.3 cents in February, 72.5 cents on 14 May and 72.2 cents on 8 September. The lows were 68.5 cents on 31 March, 68.8 cents on 30 June and 69.2 cents on 14 July. The highs stayed at about the same level and the lows rose, so the range narrowed. Edwards and Magee called that shape an ascending triangle [R25]. Through all of it the 200-day average kept rising. The fall since 8 September has brought the price from the top of that range to 69.3 cents on 2 October. That is its lowest close since mid-July and 1.4 per cent below its 200-day average. It is just above the 14 July low of 69.2 cents. The 200-day average is still rising. The price is below its 10-day exponential average, a short average that weights recent days more heavily. Marty Schwartz named the 10-day average as his main guide to which side of a market to be on, in Pit Bull, 1999 [R28]. In Table 02, RSI is 24.5, below Wilder's oversold line of 30, and the ADX reading of 36.0 comes with its negative direction line well above the positive one. That describes a month-long downtrend inside a longer uptrend. The two pathways are these. The price holds above the mid-July low, and the rising lows of the triangle stay intact. Or it closes below that low, which would break the pattern of rising lows and leave the 30 June and 31 March lows as the next ones on the chart. The price is already below a rising 200-day average, which it had stayed above since November 2025. The chart reflects the gap between RBA and Fed policy. The Australian dollar rose into the RBA's first rise in February and held near its highs through the rise in May. It kept falling through the week in which the RBA raised its cash rate again, on 29 September [R23]. Over the same days the US 10-year yield rose to 5.29 per cent, and the gap between Australian and US yields closed to 0.05 points, which section 10.00 covers. On this chart US rates have carried more weight than the RBA's rise. For resources exporters a lower Australian dollar lifts revenue in Australian dollars. For importers, and for Australians spending or investing overseas, it raises costs. Brent crude Brent is here because oil, more than China, is behind the rise in US inflation this year, as section 4.00 set out. While oil stays high, headline inflation stays high and the Fed has less room to pause. A sustained fall in oil would take away some of the pressure behind higher rates. FIG. 10 shows the Brent front-month future, the contract for the next delivery month. In 2025 it traded between about US$60 and US$77 under a falling 200-day average, and it made its low of US$58.92 on 16 December. From January the price almost doubled in three months, to US$118.35 on 31 March 2026. Much of that rise came in a few large daily moves, and the price swung both ways. Section 4.00 covers the conflict and the shipping disruption behind them. The spot price peaked higher, at US$138.21 on 7 April, because oil for delivery now was scarcer than oil for delivery later. After the peak the chart swung harder than at any time in 2025. It fell to US$90 on 17 April, returned to US$118 on 29 April, and then fell for two months to US$71.57 on 1 July, below its 200-day average. Since July the swings have turned upward again. The lows were US$72 on 1 July, US$79 on 4 August and US$99 on 22 September. The highs were US$101 on 23 July and US$109 on 15 September. The 4 August low dipped just under the 200-day average for two days, and the price has been above it since. The close on 2 October was US$102.25. Wilder's average true range, from the same 1978 book [R26], measures the size of the typical daily move. For the front-month contract it is 4.5 per cent of the price over the last 20 sessions. ADX at 22.9 is just under the 25 usually taken as a trend. On this chart the pathways depend more on news than on pattern. Higher lows would extend the uptrend since July. A close below the 4 August low, back under the 200-day average, would repeat what happened in June. Section 4.00 notes that a reopening of the straits would change the supply side. The chart says the oil shock has not ended. The fall of almost 40 per cent from late April to July would have eased inflation had it lasted. The price has since recovered most of it. The 200-day average is still rising, so the average price over the last 200 sessions is still going up. That is the pressure behind the inflation figures in section 4.00, and the size of the swings is why headline inflation has moved around so much. Oil also reaches well beyond energy companies. It is in the fuel, freight and running costs of almost every miner on the ASX. Copper Of the industrial metals, copper is the one most tied to construction, the power grid and data centres. Part 2 of this series covered why it has repriced. Its price is read as a check on the health of industrial demand. Higher interest rates usually slow building and investment, so copper is a chart where a rise in rates would be expected to show as weaker demand. FIG. 11 shows COMEX copper in US dollars a pound. From US$4.13 on 8 April 2025 it has risen about 59 per cent, to US$6.55 on 2 October 2026. There is one break in the chart. Copper rose to US$5.80 on 23 July 2025 and then fell 22 per cent in a single day, from US$5.57 on 30 July to US$4.33 on 31 July. After that the chart is a steady climb. The lows were US$4.33 on 31 July 2025, US$4.93 on 4 November, US$5.34 on 20 March 2026, US$5.94 on 24 June and US$6.33 on 14 September. The highs were US$6.18 on 29 January, US$6.65 on 2 June and US$6.80 on 9 September. Each is above the one before. The price crossed back above its 200-day average in September 2025 and has stayed above it for a year. The 50-day average has been above the 200-day since 31 October 2025. ADX reads only 10.7, well below the 20 usually taken as no trend. The low ADX reflects the size of copper's pullbacks. ADX measures how one-directional the daily moves are, and copper has climbed in steps with pullbacks of 7 to 14 per cent between them. A market can make higher highs and higher lows with a low ADX, as long as the pullbacks are deep enough. The pathways are a continuation, in which the next pullback stops above the 14 September low, or a close below that low, which would be the first lower low in more than a year. Copper has not closed above its 9 September high, and on 2 October it was on its 50-day average. The chart shows no sign of weaker demand so far. Copper has kept making higher highs through the seven months in which the US 10-year yield rose. On this chart, demand for the metal, or the market's expectation of it, has been strong enough to outweigh the rise in borrowing costs. It is the one chart of the six that does not fit the higher-rates argument so far. For ASX copper producers and explorers, the price has been rising through the whole period covered by this piece. Gold The gold chart is here because gold is the asset most directly exposed to real yields. It pays no income, so when a US Treasury pays more after inflation, the return an investor gives up by holding gold rises with it. Gold also matters to the ASX more than to most markets, through its gold producers and its many gold explorers. FIG. 12 shows COMEX gold. From US$2,974 on 7 April 2025 it rose about 80 per cent to US$5,318 on 29 January 2026. For most of that climb the price stayed well above a rising 200-day average, and dips such as the one to US$3,960 on 4 November stopped at or above the 50-day line. Gold then fell to US$4,653 on 2 February, rose to US$5,312 on 2 March, and fell again. Two peaks at almost the same level with a dip between them is what Edwards and Magee called a double top [R25]. The pattern is usually said to be complete when the price falls below the dip between the peaks. Gold did that in March and reached US$4,376 on 26 March. Since then each rally has stopped lower than the last. The highs were US$4,880 on 17 April and US$4,698 on 24 August. The low of US$3,992 on 16 July was below the March low. Lower highs and lower lows are the chart definition of a downtrend. The price fell below its 200-day average on 5 June for the first time on this chart, and the 50-day average crossed below the 200-day on 1 July. Traders call that a death cross, a convention rather than a tested result. The price rose back above the 200-day line briefly in late August and early September, and it has been below it since 4 September. On 28 September it fell 3.5 per cent in a day, to US$4,168. It closed at US$4,162 on 2 October, its lowest close since early August. The rise in the 200-day line has slowed. ADX at 19.4 is still just under the 20 usually taken as the start of a trend. The pathways are a continuation of the lower highs, in which the next rally stops below the 24 August high, or a close above that high, which would be the first higher high since January. Since March the chart and the fundamentals describe the same picture. Gold made its second peak on 2 March, as the real yield began its climb from 1.72 per cent at the end of February to 2.88 per cent on 1 October [R5]. It has not made a new high since. The earlier part of the chart is harder to square with that reading. Gold rose about 80 per cent between April 2025 and January 2026 while the real yield stayed between about 1.7 and 2.3 per cent [R5], so real yields are not the whole story. Gold is still about 40 per cent above its April 2025 price. The direction has changed from rising to falling. For ASX gold companies that is the change since March. What would change that reading is a fall in real yields, which would show first in FIG. 03. The S&P/ASX 200 The ASX 200 is where all of this reaches most Australian investors. The US yield, the Australian dollar, oil and the metal prices each reach the index through the banks, miners and energy companies that make up much of it. FIG. 13 shows the ASX 200. It fell to 7,343 on 7 April 2025 and recovered to 9,019 by August 2025. Since then it has been in a range. The highs were 9,095 on 21 October 2025, 9,199 on 27 February 2026 and 9,272 on 6 August. The lows were 8,416 on 21 November 2025, 8,366 on 23 March and 8,497 on 20 May. The highs have edged up and the lows have held at about the same level. A range shows up clearly in the averages. The 200-day average has been almost flat since May, and the index has crossed it 15 times since March. On a flat line, crossings of that kind are what a range looks like, and a single one says little. The Donchian channel is the highest high and lowest low over a set number of days, named for Richard Donchian, one of the first systematic trend followers. The Turtle traders described by Curtis Faith in Way of the Turtle, 2007, watched the 20-day and 55-day channels [R27]. The last eight weeks took the index from the top of its range, 9,272 on 6 August, down 6.4 per cent to 8,682 on 2 October. It rose to 8,789 on 30 September, the day after the RBA decision, and fell 2.0 per cent the next day to 8,614, its lowest close since early June. It is now below its 10-day, 50-day and 200-day averages and near its 20-day and 55-day lows. ADX at 25.1, with the negative direction line above the positive, describes a short downtrend inside a flat longer picture. The Australian market has moved sideways since August 2025, while the S&P 500 has risen, as FIG. 15 in section 10.00 shows. The range began before the rise in US yields. The fall since 6 August came at the same time as the US 10-year yield rose from about 4.7 to 5.29 per cent. That timing fits the argument of this piece, that a higher yield raises the return investors ask of shares, although timing alone cannot show cause. A hold at the lows of the range, as at each of the three lows since November 2025, would suggest the market has absorbed the rise in rates so far. A close below the 23 March low would be the first break of the range on the downside in a year, and the first sign on this chart that the market has not absorbed it. Read together, four charts fit the argument of this piece. The US yield is rising, gold turned down as real yields rose, and oil is still high enough to keep inflation up. The Australian dollar has fallen below its 200-day average as the gap between Australian and US yields closed. One is mixed. The ASX 200 has been in a range since August 2025, and has fallen only since August 2026. Copper does not fit. It has kept rising through the whole rise in rates, which says demand for the metal has so far outweighed higher borrowing costs. The rise in US rates has come with a weaker gold price, and more recently with falls in the local market and the currency. Timing alone cannot show cause. The rise in rates has not yet shown in the copper price. The Soros lens and the US dollar George Soros set out the idea of reflexivity in The Alchemy of Finance, 1987 [R30]. Prices do not only reflect fundamentals. They can change them, and the change feeds back into the price. The nearest candidate for such a loop this fortnight is the US dollar. Higher US real yields draw money into dollar assets, which lifts the dollar. The US dollar index, which measures the dollar against six major currencies, is 2.7 per cent above its 200-day average with RSI at 71.7 [R20]. The chart shows the first half of that mechanism. Whether a stronger dollar then feeds back into higher US yields is not visible in the data. The dollar was weaker earlier in 2026, when BOFIT wrote in May [R17]. 10.00 — WHAT IT MEANS FOR AN ASX INVESTOR The spread, the dollar and the resources sector The spread in the eight series is the Australian 10-year yield minus the US 10-year yield. It says whether investors think Australia will need higher or lower interest rates than the US over the next decade. When the gap widens in Australia's favour, holding Australian dollars pays more than holding US dollars, and the Australian dollar has tended to rise with it. FIG. 14 shows that relationship since 2023. The spread turned positive in late August 2025 and reached about 0.8 percentage points in the first half of 2026, while the RBA raised its cash rate three times [R9]. The Australian dollar rose from about 65 US cents to above 72 cents in May [R8]. The spread had narrowed to 0.34 points by mid-September and to 0.05 points on 30 September as US yields caught up. Most commodities are priced in US dollars. When the Australian dollar falls, a miner earns more Australian dollars for the same tonne, even if the commodity price has not moved. When it rises, the reverse happens. A 5 per cent rise in the Australian dollar takes about 4.8 per cent off the Australian-dollar revenue of an exporter with no hedging, on the same US-dollar price. That is Samso's arithmetic on a simple case, not a forecast for any company. The RBA raised its cash rate by a quarter of a point to 4.60 per cent on 29 September, in a unanimous decision [R23]. It was the fourth rise of 2026. The statement said recent inflation was stronger than expected and that higher fuel prices had partly passed through to the prices of other goods [R23]. A higher cash rate would usually widen the spread in Australia's favour. This time the Australian 10-year yield ended September at 5.34 per cent, about where it was two weeks earlier, while the US 10-year rose to 5.29 per cent [R4] [R9]. The spread narrowed and the Australian dollar fell. FIG. 15 shows the two indices rebased. The ASX 200 is down 0.5 per cent for 2026 and the S&P 500 is up 12.6 per cent, both on price alone [R20] [R22]. Samso's reading, rather than a measured result, is that higher Australian rates weigh on bank borrowers and on property. The ASX also has far less of the technology sector that has led the US market. For the resources sector the picture splits by commodity. Copper averaged US$14,326 a tonne in August, the highest monthly average on the World Bank's nominal series [R18]. Part 2 of this series covered why copper and the metals China controls have repriced while iron ore has not. Gold, on the other hand, is weakest when real yields are highest, as section 9.00 set out. A rise in real yields reaches gold producers and gold explorers through the gold price and through the higher return investors can get elsewhere. A copper producer, a gold explorer and a bank are all listed on the ASX, and the same week of US bond market news moves them in different directions. The eight series are there to show which way each force is moving. They do not say what any one company is worth. 11.00 — SAMSO TAKE Samso view SAMSO TAKE The rise in US rates this year came mostly from real yields. The 10-year yield is above 5 per cent, but the bond market's inflation expectation is close to where it has been for most of the last three years. Investors are asking for a higher return after inflation. That weighs on gold, on share valuations and on anything priced against the US 10-year, even while inflation expectations stay put. In Samso's view China is a smaller factor than oil in US inflation this year. Its factory prices have turned, the yuan is stronger and the US now pays more for Chinese goods. For three years falling Chinese prices tended to hold goods prices down. That effect has ended. Chinese goods prices are now rising, but slowly. Oil is still doing most of the work, and oil depends on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. For an ASX investor the eight series are moving in different directions. The RBA raised its cash rate on 29 September and the Australian dollar still fell. Over the same days US yields rose faster. Gold has been falling since March while copper has held most of its gains. The same move in US yields affects gold companies, copper companies and banks differently. Rates do not reach every part of the ASX in the same way. FIG. 16 splits the market into four size groups, from the ASX 20 down to the S&P/ASX Emerging Companies index. Size here means market value, which is the share price multiplied by the number of shares on issue. Blue chips are the largest companies and micro caps the smallest. Blue chips are the only group up for 2026. Small caps have fallen furthest. Blue chips. The ASX 20 is up 4.6 per cent for the year. It holds the big banks, BHP, CSL and a few others. It peaked on 6 August and has fallen 6.7 per cent since, over the same weeks the US 10-year yield rose above 5 per cent. ASX 200 financials fell 10.3 per cent over those weeks. Many investors hold bank shares for their dividends. Samso reads the higher bond yield as giving them another source of income, although the index alone cannot prove it. For the miners in the ASX 20 the picture is different. They sell in US dollars, so a softer Australian dollar lifts their revenue in Australian dollars. The ASX 20 is still the only group up for the year, although the index alone cannot show how much of that is the currency. Mid caps. The MidCap 50 is down 5.0 per cent. It peaked in late January and sits just under a 200-day average that has stopped rising. These are companies large enough to borrow but often still spending on growth. When investors ask for a higher return, earnings that are still some years away are worth less today. Samso reads that as the main weight on this group, although the index alone cannot prove it. Small caps. The Small Ordinaries, the companies ranked roughly 101 to 300 by size, is down 12.4 per cent, the largest fall of the four. Most of it came before August. The index was already 7.4 per cent lower by 6 August and now sits 5.8 per cent below a falling 200-day average. It holds many of the ASX's mid-tier gold and resources companies, and gold has been falling since March. Fewer shares trade here, so buying and selling both move prices further. Micro exploration companies. The Emerging Companies index covers about 200 micro caps ranked roughly 350 to 600 by size [R21]. Most exploration companies are smaller still, so it is the nearest index rather than an exact one. The index is down 6.4 per cent for 2026. It made its 2026 low on 30 July. Since 6 August it has risen 0.9 per cent, the only group up over those weeks. An explorer has no earnings, so a higher rate does not reduce the value of its profits. What matters is its next capital raising, when it sells new shares to fund its work. A rising share price lets an explorer raise on better terms, and a falling one does the reverse. For copper explorers the metal price is still near its highs. For gold explorers it has been falling since March, although it is still about 40 per cent above its April 2025 price. For these companies the cash balance, and how many quarters it lasts, usually matters more than interest rates. Over the next fortnight Samso will watch the US real yield, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and the Australian dollar. Each would show in the charts in this piece before it shows in a company's results. This piece is general information on the forces acting on ASX stocks. It is not a recommendation. THE VOCABULARY, IN PLAIN ENGLISH Federal funds rate The overnight rate US banks charge each other, set as a target range by the Federal Reserve. It is the base for almost every US interest rate. FOMC The Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed body that sets the federal funds rate. Bond and yield A bond is a loan to a government or company. The yield is the annual return for making it. When the price of a bond falls, its yield rises. US 10-year Treasury yield The return for lending to the US government for ten years. It is the reference price for money worldwide. Yield curve and slope Yields across different terms. The slope here is the 10-year yield minus the 2-year yield. Real yield The return on a bond after inflation, read from the yield on inflation-protected bonds. TIPS Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, US government bonds whose repayments rise with inflation. Breakeven inflation The inflation rate the bond market expects, the gap between an ordinary Treasury yield and a TIPS yield of the same term. Term premium The extra return investors want for the uncertainty of lending for a long period. CPI, headline and core The consumer price index measures the price of a basket of goods and services. Headline includes everything. Core leaves out food and energy. PCE The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Fed's preferred inflation measure. Trimmed mean The RBA's preferred underlying inflation measure. It drops the largest monthly rises and falls and averages the rest. PPI The producer price index, the prices factories receive for their goods. Brent crude, spot and futures Brent is the main global oil benchmark. Spot is the price for delivery now. A future is a price agreed today for delivery later. Backwardation When the spot price is above the futures price, a sign the market is short of supply now. AUD/USD How many US dollars one Australian dollar buys. The spread The Australian 10-year yield minus the US 10-year yield. Rebased Two series set to 100 on the same day so their lines show relative performance. TIC Treasury International Capital, the US Treasury's record of who holds US government debt. 50-day, 200-day and 10-day averages The average closing price over the last 50, 200 or 10 trading days. The 10-day here is exponential, which weights recent days more heavily. Higher highs and higher lows A run of rising peaks and rising troughs, the chart definition of an uptrend. The reverse is a downtrend. Golden cross When the 50-day average rises above the 200-day average. A convention, not a proven signal. Double top Two price peaks at about the same level with a dip between them. Average true range Wilder's measure of the typical daily price move. RSI The Relative Strength Index, recent gains against recent losses on a scale of 0 to 100. ADX The Average Directional Index, a measure of whether a price is trending at all. Donchian channel The highest high and lowest low over a set number of days. Death cross When the 50-day average falls below the 200-day average. A convention, not a proven signal. Reflexivity George Soros's idea that prices can change the fundamentals they reflect, and that the change feeds back into the price. 12.00 — REFERENCES AND SOURCES Where every number comes from Every figure in this piece except the two photographs is an original Samso illustration drawn from the published data named in its caption. PLATE 01 and PLATE 02 are public-domain photographs reproduced with the photographer credited. Each entry below carries its identifier, and the same identifier appears in the text where the source is used. Market data was updated on 4 October 2026, to the close of 2 October. Where a figure is Samso's own arithmetic, the text says so. [R1] Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, "Federal Reserve issues FOMC statement", press release, 16 September 2026. federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20260916a.htm [R2] Federal Reserve, Summary of Economic Projections, Table 1, 16 September 2026. federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomcprojtabl20260916.htm [R3] Federal Reserve, "Transcript of Chairman Warsh's Press Conference, September 16, 2026", final. federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCpresconf20260916.pdf [R4] Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FRED, series DGS10, DGS2, DGS30, DGS3MO, DFF and T10Y2Y, daily, to 1 October 2026, with T10Y2Y to 2 October. fred.stlouisfed.org [R5] FRED, series DFII10 (10-year TIPS real yield) and T10YIE (10-year breakeven inflation rate), daily, to 2 October 2026. fred.stlouisfed.org [R6] US Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI-U all items and all items less food and energy, via FRED CPIAUCSL and CPILFESL, to August 2026. US Bureau of Economic Analysis, PCE price index excluding food and energy, via FRED PCEPILFE, to August 2026, after the annual revision published on 30 September 2026. fred.stlouisfed.org [R7] US Energy Information Administration, Brent spot price FOB, via FRED DCOILBRENTEU, daily, to 29 September 2026. fred.stlouisfed.org [R8] Federal Reserve H.10 foreign exchange rates, via FRED DEXUSAL (US$ per A$) and DEXCHUS (yuan per US$), daily, to 25 September 2026. fred.stlouisfed.org [R9] Reserve Bank of Australia, Statistical Table F2, Capital Market Yields, Government Bonds, series FCMYGBAG10D, daily, to 30 September 2026, and Table F1, cash rate target. rba.gov.au/statistics/tables [R10] Australian Bureau of Statistics, Consumer Price Index, Australia, August 2026, released 30 September 2026. abs.gov.au [R11] National Bureau of Statistics of China, "Consumer Price Index in August 2026", 10 September 2026. stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202609/t20260910_1965275.html [R12] National Bureau of Statistics of China, "Industrial Producer Price Indexes" for March, April, May, June, July and August 2026, released 11 April, 12 May, 11 June, 10 July, 10 August and 10 September 2026. stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease [R13] US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Import Price Index by Origin, China, and Import Price Index, all commodities, via FRED CHNTOT and IR, monthly, to August 2026. fred.stlouisfed.org [R14] US Department of the Treasury, Treasury International Capital system, "Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities", Table 5 and historical table mfhhis01, to July 2026. ticdata.treasury.gov [R15] US Energy Information Administration, Short-Term Energy Outlook, September 2026, released 9 September 2026. eia.gov/outlooks/steo [R16] García-Herrero, A., "What the war in Iran means for China", Bruegel Analysis 06/2026, 17 March 2026. bruegel.org [R17] Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies, BOFIT Weekly Review, "The yuan has appreciated moderately in 2026", 15 May 2026. bofit.fi [R18] World Bank, Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet), monthly prices, updated 2 September 2026. worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets [R19] Kitco, precious metals spot prices, 2 October 2026, 5.00 pm New York time. kitco.com/price/precious-metals [R20] Yahoo Finance, daily prices for ^TNX, AUDUSD=X, BZ=F, HG=F, GC=F, DX-Y.NYB, ^AXJO, ^GSPC and the S&P/ASX 20, MidCap 50, Small Ordinaries, Emerging Companies and ASX 200 Financials indices (^ATLI, ^AXMD, ^AXSO, ^AXEC, ^AXFJ), to 2 October 2026. finance.yahoo.com [R21] ASX and S&P Dow Jones Indices, S&P/ASX Emerging Companies Index fact sheet. asx.com.au/content/dam/asx/investors/investment-options/emerging-companies-index-fact-sheet.pdf [R22] S&P Dow Jones Indices, S&P 500, via FRED SP500, daily, to 2 October 2026. fred.stlouisfed.org [R23] Reserve Bank of Australia, "Statement by the Monetary Policy Board: Monetary Policy Decision", media release, 29 September 2026. rba.gov.au/media-releases [R24] China Daily, "China's PPI turns positive after 41 months of decline", 11 April 2026. chinadaily.com.cn. As reported, not checked at source. [R25] Edwards, R. D. and Magee, J., Technical Analysis of Stock Trends, 1948. Cited for the Dow Theory definition of a trend as a run of higher highs and higher lows, and for the ascending triangle and double top patterns. [R26] Wilder, J. W. Jr, New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems, 1978. The source of RSI, ATR and ADX. [R27] Faith, C., Way of the Turtle, 2007. The Turtle system's use of 20-day and 55-day Donchian channels. [R28] Schwartz, M., Pit Bull, 1999. Subtitled Lessons from Wall Street's Champion Day Trader. His use of the 10-day exponential moving average. [R29] Schwager, J. D., Market Wizards, 1989. The interview with Ed Seykota, a long-term trend follower. [R30] Soros, G., The Alchemy of Finance, 1987. The idea of reflexivity. [R31] PLATE 01, "Eccles Building", Federal Reserve, 2012, public domain, "commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eccles_Building_(26088200676).jpg". PLATE 02, "Port of Shanghai, Yangshan Deep-water Harbour Zone", Alex Needham, 2008, public domain, "commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Port_of_Shanghai,_Yangshan_Deep-water_Harbour_Zone,_02.jpg" [R32] Cover photo. The Marriner S. Eccles Building, Federal Reserve Board, Washington, photographed by the Federal Reserve, 2012. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons "commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eccles_Building_(26088200676).jpg" The Samso Way – Seek the Research Here at Samso, we pride ourselves on delivering content for investors that is independent and informed by over three decades of experience in the industry. Our content is well-researched and is only created if I see merit in discussing the company's story. Our mission is simple. Cut through the noise and spotlight what matters. Genuine stories, grounded insights, and real opportunity. Investors can explore our four core platforms: Coffee with Samso Samso Insights Samso News Samso Research There may be numerous paths to success in investing, but the common thread among successful individuals is that they remain committed to making informed decisions. Equip yourself with the right knowledge and tools, and you will be well on your way to achieving your financial goals. Most importantly, investors need to be absolutely diligent in understanding their own risk-reward tolerance and capabilities. Never bite off more than you can chew. As they say, Rome wasn't built in a day, and the Great Wall stood because it took centuries to complete. The Samso Philosophy: Stay curious. Stay sharp. And remember, digging deeper always uncovers the real value. In Life, there is no such thing as a Free Lunch. Never bite off more than you can chew is my parting comment. Happy Investing, and the only four-letter word you need to know is DYOR. To support our independent work, please head over to our Support Page and give us a helping hand in any of the ways listed. This is a new initiative for the Samso Platform, and it was always the concept of Samso when we started this journey in 2018. Disclaimer This article is general information only. It is not financial product advice and it does not take into account any reader's objectives, financial situation or needs. It contains no price targets, no valuations and no recommendation to buy, hold or sell any security. Companies named in this article are used as historical illustrations of events that have already occurred and no view is expressed on their current merits. Readers should consider obtaining advice from a licensed financial adviser and should conduct their own research before making any investment decision. Samso and its associates may hold interests in companies mentioned. Read full Disclaimer. About Samso Samso is a trusted platform that equips dedicated investors with up-to-date industry knowledge and insights from top CEOs and thought leaders. By staying informed on business advancements and market trends, investors can enhance their financial decisions through a combination of expert guidance and their own research. Coffee with Samso, Samso Insights, Samso News and Samso Research are four ways into the same work. Interviews, long-form research, short takes on announcements and company-specific studies. Every one of them is about how to think about investing rather than what to buy. Samso Insights | www.samso.com.au | An Investor Lens on ASX-Listed Companies Samso Insights are independent research commentary for general information only. Nothing in this article is financial product advice, and it does not take into account any reader's objectives, financial situation or needs. 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Part 1 mapped the register. Part 2 explained which of those ores actually give their metal back. This note prices them. It carries one Watershed orebody through three eras of tungsten money, from a US$450 study assumption in 2014 to a A$1.3 billion valuation in 2026; it re-bases the district’s only public tin study to today’s price with every assumption on the table; and it closes on the question the whole series has been building to. WHAT THIS PIECE COVERS 1.00 THE PREMISE AND THE THREE ERAS Same rocks, different money, and what this note sets out to test. 2.00 THE FOOT SOLDIER'S REPORT CARD Whether today's tin price is a squeeze or a regime, audited against a 2021 call. 3.00 ONE OREBODY, THREE ERAS: WATERSHED The one deposit in the field studied in three different price regimes, 2014, 2017 and 2026. 4.00 ERA THREE IN DETAIL: THE WATERSHED STUDY What the June 2026 evaluation claims, and what it stops short of claiming. 5.00 THE 2013 MT GARNET TIN STUDY, RE-BASED The district's only tin study, re-run at today's price. 6.00 THE RISING TIDE OF TUNGSTEN How policy rather than disorder proved tungsten's scarcity. 7.00 WHICH ORES THE NEW PRICES REPRICE Why a price rise reaches clean ore long before it reaches locked ore. 8.00 THE CHINA VARIABLE: IS THE TIN PRICE REAL? The case that the price is managed, and the case that the lever has moved. 9.00 THE MECCA QUESTION Closing the series on endowment, price, and the missing middle. 1.00 — THE PREMISE AND THE THREE ERAS Same rocks, different money Nothing in this note is about geology, because the geology has not changed. The Watershed scheelite skarn (scheelite is calcium tungstate, the main tungsten ore mineral; a skarn is rock formed where granite fluids replaced limestone) contains today the same tungsten it contained when Vital Metals finished a Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) on it in 2014. The Gillian and Pinnacles skarns contain the same tin they contained when Consolidated Tin Mines put numbers on them in 2013. What has changed is the price of the metal inside them, and the change is not small: tin trades near an all-time high, and the benchmark tungsten intermediate has moved roughly ten-fold in three years. This note measures what that does to a field whose deposits Part 1 catalogued and whose metallurgy Part 2 sorted.[26][27] The method is deliberately narrow. Rather than forecast prices, the note takes the two substantive public economic studies ever completed on these deposits and reads them against three eras of money. Era one is the years around 2013 and 2014, when the studies were written. Era two is the long trough that followed, which for the tungsten market ran all the way to 2023. Era three is the repricing of 2024 to 2026 that both metals are now trading in. Those three labels carry through every section that follows. Watershed is the ideal instrument because its full study history is public: the same orebody was priced in 2014, re-priced in 2015 and 2017, sold in 2018, and priced again in June 2026, each time with the assumptions disclosed in announcements to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).[15][16][17]

Abstract Meeka Metals poured first gold at the Murchison Gold Project in Western Australia on 1 July 2025. FY2026 was the first full year. The December 2024 feasibility study set year one at 46,000 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of A$1,943 an ounce, against A$1,982 across the whole ten-year plan. Meeka recovered 28,829 ounces at A$2,956 an ounce. It sold that gold at an average of A$6,328 an ounce against the A$4,100 of the study's spot case, which is what turned a difficult year into a survivable one. Two things went short of plan and the company has been much more forthcoming about one of them. Grade came in at about 73 per cent of plan, because the open pit mining contractor could not advance the pits fast enough to reach the higher grade ore. Throughput came in at about 88 per cent of plan, because the processing plant did not reach its nameplate 600,000 tonnes a year until August 2026, about fourteen months after first gold. Recovery was on plan at 96 per cent. Samso's view is that the response was a large one taken quickly. The company said it would conclude open pit mining in July 2026, removing a cost it puts at A$4m to A$6m a month and leaving about 300,000 ounces at 1.4 grams per tonne in the ground for a possible later stage. On the company's stated plan, production now comes from Andy Well underground, mined by Meeka's people rather than a contractor, where development reached a steady 600 metres a month in June 2026 and unit costs more than halved across the year. Stoping began on the Wilber lode, 308,000 ounces at 12.2 grams per tonne, in late May 2026.

Samso Market Update | Thursday, 8 October 2026 | Market close 4:30pm AEDT Maas Group Holdings Limited (ASX: MGH) fell 22.38% to A$4.96 on the ASX today, and the S&P/ASX 200 closed down 66.8 points or 0.77% at 8,660.9. The All Ordinaries, which tracks the 500 largest listed companies, fell 0.80% to 8,823.2. The S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries, an index of the companies ranked 101 to 300 by size, fell 1.22% to 3,270.0. Wednesday's edition is ASX today, Wednesday 7 October 2026. ASX today: Key Highlights The S&P/ASX 200 closed at 8,660.9, down 66.8 points or 0.77% (Yahoo Finance, 4:16pm AEDT). Materials was the weakest of the 11 sectors, down 2.03%. Financials fell 0.99%. Consumer staples was the strongest, up 1.42%, ahead of energy at 1.36% and utilities at 1.34%. Maas Group Holdings fell 22.38% to A$4.96. The company told the ASX that speculation about the proposed Firmus float had influenced trading in its shares. Alvo Minerals Limited (ASX: ALV) rose 210% to A$0.062 on the day it announced rare earth drilling results in Brazil and a A$1 million placement. Across 1,639 ASX-listed companies, 379 rose, 713 fell and 547 were unchanged (ASX data, 4:36pm AEDT). Brent crude for December was at US$102.66 a barrel at 4:25pm AEDT. The Australian dollar was buying approximately 69.6 US cents. Miners and banks fall, and the Firmus float Eight of the 11 sector indices moved by more than 0.75% in either direction. Materials fell 2.03%, information technology fell 0.77%, industrials fell 0.92% and financials fell 0.99%. Consumer staples rose 1.42%, energy rose 1.36%, utilities rose 1.34% and telecommunications rose 0.89%. Consumer discretionary rose 0.31%, real estate rose 0.17% and health care fell 0.12%. The sector figures are from Yahoo Finance at 4:16pm AEDT. ABC News business reporter David Taylor wrote at 1:41pm AEDT that there was "a meaningful movement out of the big banks and miners, and into defensive stocks like consumer staples". ABC News also quoted Cameron McCormack, a senior portfolio manager at fund manager VanEck. He said the Reserve Bank of Australia's run of rate rises "will likely add further pressure on markets" and that the Australian 10-year government bond yield was at its highest level since 2011. A bond yield is the yearly return from buying a government bond at today's price, and when yields rise, bond prices fall. The second story was Firmus, a data centre operator that is due to list on the ASX on 23 October. ABC News reported that the Firmus bookbuild closed today and that media reports pointed to weaker demand than expected. A bookbuild is the process where investment banks collect bids from investors to set the price of a float. ABC's live blog cited reports that the price may be cut from A$11 a share to A$9. A separate ABC article cited about A$8. Samso has not seen a Firmus statement on the price. ABC News also reported that the final capital city auction clearance rate from property data firm Cotality was 45.4%, the lowest since July. Blue Chips (above A$1 billion) The four bands in this edition are Samso's own size bands. Each company is placed by its market capitalisation at Wednesday's close. Turnover is the dollar value of shares traded in the session. Maas Group Holdings Limited (ASX: MGH) closed at A$4.96, down 22.38%, on turnover of A$81.43 million. It closed on Wednesday at A$6.39, after a fall of 5.75% that day. The ASX sent the company a price query, which is a letter asking a company whether it knows of a reason for a sharp move in its shares. Maas replied at 12:53pm AEDT. It said it was "not aware of any undisclosed information that would explain the recent trading". It said there had been "significant market speculation and commentary concerning whether the proposed IPO of Firmus will be proceeding". It said it is "both an investor in Firmus and, through its subsidiary, JLE, a supplier to Firmus". ABC News reported that Maas invested A$410 million for a 3.2% stake in Firmus earlier this year. SKS Technologies Group Limited (ASX: SKS) fell 10.10% to A$8.81 on turnover of A$20.07 million, with no ASX announcement since yesterday afternoon. It fell 12.26% on Wednesday, the day it announced a share sale by its founder. Lovisa Holdings Limited (ASX: LOV) fell 9.15% to A$22.44 on the day it announced a senior executive change. Electro Optic Systems Holdings Limited (ASX: EOS) fell 8.16% to A$10.58 and Megaport Limited (ASX: MP1) fell 8.02% to A$19.38. Neither had an ASX announcement since yesterday afternoon. ASX Limited (ASX: ASX) rose 3.84% to A$60.59 on turnover of A$83.11 million. The Lottery Corporation Limited (ASX: TLC) rose 3.77% to A$4.96. Domino's Pizza Enterprises Limited (ASX: DMP) rose 3.38% to A$22.00, after a rise of 4.47% on Wednesday. Xero Limited (ASX: XRO) rose 3.01% to A$57.79. None of the four had a price-sensitive ASX announcement since yesterday afternoon. Mid Caps (A$500 million to A$1 billion) Weebit Nano Ltd (ASX: WBT) fell 11.52% to A$3.15 on turnover of A$8.10 million. Bannerman Energy Ltd (ASX: BMN) fell 7.63% to A$3.39, after a rise of 8.58% on Wednesday. European Lithium Limited (ASX: EUR) fell 7.23% to A$0.385. Core Lithium Ltd (ASX: CXO) fell 7.02% to A$0.265, after a fall of 6.56% on Wednesday. PMET Resources Inc. (ASX: PMT) fell 6.74% to A$0.415 and Elsight Limited (ASX: ELS) fell 6.58% to A$4.12. None of the six had an ASX announcement since yesterday afternoon. Gains in this band were small. Qualitas Real Estate Income Fund (ASX: QRI) rose 5.00% to A$1.47. Lindian Resources Limited (ASX: LIN) rose 3.33% to A$0.465 on turnover of A$6.77 million. PolyNovo Limited (ASX: PNV) rose 2.79% to A$0.92. None had a price-sensitive ASX announcement since yesterday afternoon. Small Caps (A$150 million to A$500 million) Whiterock Lithium Corp. (ASX: WLC) fell 13.59% to A$3.37 and Nova Minerals Corp (ASX: NVA) fell 11.76% to A$0.60, each on turnover of A$0.30 million. Dateline Resources Limited (ASX: DTR) fell 9.09% to A$0.09 on turnover of A$1.96 million. Tungsten Mining NL (ASX: TGN) fell 8.51% to A$0.215 on turnover of A$1.59 million. None of the four had an ASX announcement since yesterday afternoon. Prospect Resources Limited (ASX: PSC) rose 6.73% to A$0.2775. Finder Energy Holdings Limited (ASX: FDR) rose 5.26% to A$0.30 on the day it released a corporate presentation. Silver Mines Limited (ASX: SVL) rose 3.85% to A$0.135 on turnover of A$1.84 million. Orion Minerals Ltd (ASX: ORN) rose 13.64% to A$0.025, on turnover of only A$0.06 million. Micro Caps (below A$150 million) Alvo Minerals Limited (ASX: ALV) rose 210% to A$0.062 on turnover of A$6.77 million. Its market capitalisation at the previous close was approximately A$6 million. The company made two announcements shortly after the open. The first reported drilling results from its Bluebush project in Brazil, which it describes as an ionic clay rare earth project. Rare earths are a group of metals used in magnets, and ionic clay is a soft, near-surface host from which they can be leached. The second announced a placement, which is a sale of new shares to selected investors, of A$1 million at A$0.02 a share. The release said that price was equal to the last closing price. Lakes Blue Energy NL (ASX: LKO) rose 27.66% to A$0.30 on the day it announced workover and testing at its Wombat 5 well. Syntara Limited (ASX: SNT) rose 19.05% to A$0.025, First Au Limited (ASX: FAU) rose 17.14% to A$0.205 and Eden Innovations Ltd (ASX: EDE) rose 15.38% to A$0.09. None of the three had an ASX announcement since yesterday afternoon. Dalaroo Metals Ltd (ASX: DAL) fell 19.35% to A$0.125 on turnover of A$1.65 million, with no ASX announcement since yesterday afternoon. It rose 106.67% on Wednesday, the day it announced gold results from its first drilling program. Mamba Exploration Limited (ASX: M24) fell 18.46% to A$0.053 and Enlitic Inc. (ASX: ENL) fell 17.50% to A$0.033, with no ASX announcement since yesterday afternoon. Antilles Gold Limited (ASX: AAU) fell 14.29% to A$0.006 on the day it announced that its rights issue had closed oversubscribed. At that price a move of one tenth of a cent is 14%. Commodities and Currency Each change below is measured against the Wednesday close quoted in this morning's edition. Prices are from Yahoo Finance at 4:25pm AEDT. Gold futures for December were at US$4,152.60 an ounce, up about 0.4%. Copper for December was at US$6.719 a pound, up about 1.2%. Brent crude for December was at US$102.66 a barrel, up about 1.7%. West Texas Intermediate, the US oil benchmark, was at US$90.19 a barrel for November delivery, up about 1.4%. Iron ore was up 1.1% at US$92.15 a tonne at 2:27pm AEDT, according to ABC News. The Australian dollar was buying approximately 69.6 US cents at 4:32pm AEDT. It was at approximately 69.6 US cents at 8:45am AEDT. Samso Concluding Comments The S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.77% and the Small Ordinaries fell 1.22%. Materials and financials, the two largest sectors, both fell, and consumer staples, energy and utilities rose. Maas Group lost more than a fifth of its value in one session, and the company itself pointed to speculation about the Firmus float. Firmus is due to list on 23 October, and its final price had not been announced at the close. General information only. This is not financial advice. Samso Market Update | Thursday, 8 October 2026 | Pre-market 9:45am AEDT Futures point to a lower open on the ASX today. ASX 200 futures were down 0.7% at 8,701 points at about 7:30am AEDT, according to ABC News. A futures contract is an agreement to buy or sell at a set price on a later date, and its price shows where traders expect the index to go. The S&P/ASX 200 closed on Wednesday at 8,727.7, down 8.0 points or 0.09%. The All Ordinaries, which tracks the 500 largest listed companies, fell 0.10% to 8,894.6. The S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries, an index of the companies ranked 101 to 300 by size, rose 0.15% to 3,310.3. The Australian dollar was buying approximately 69.6 US cents at 8:45am AEDT. Wednesday's edition is ASX today, Wednesday 7 October 2026. ASX today: Key Highlights ASX 200 futures were down 0.7% at 8,701 points at about 7:30am AEDT (ABC News). All four main US share indices fell on Wednesday. The S&P 500 lost 0.22% to 7,801.77, one day after a record close. The Russell 2000, an index of smaller US companies, fell 1.31% to 2,793.20. Germany's DAX fell 1.35% and France's CAC 40 fell 1.22%. ABC News reported that bond yields climbed and that markets were worried about government debt, with France in focus. Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 0.92% on Wednesday to 70,035.71. Gold for December fell 1.20% to US$4,136.70 an ounce. Silver for December fell 2.50% to US$60.05 an ounce. No Australian Bureau of Statistics release is scheduled for today. Wall Street overnight All four main US share indices fell on Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.66% to 51,179.87. The S&P 500 lost 0.22% to 7,801.77. It had closed on Tuesday at 7,818.93, which Yahoo Finance reported as a record. The Nasdaq Composite lost 0.22% to 27,538.69. The Russell 2000, an index of smaller US companies, fell 1.31% to 2,793.20. ABC News reported that Wall Street "fell slightly" from its record high. It reported that bond yields climbed and that markets remained worried about high government debt around the world. It named France as a recent focus. The US 10-year Treasury yield was about 5.28% at about 3pm New York time on Wednesday, up about 1 basis point from 5.27% on Tuesday. A Treasury is a US government bond. A bond yield is the yearly return from buying a government bond at today's price, and when yields rise, bond prices fall. A basis point is one hundredth of a percentage point. Japan The Nikkei 225 closed on Wednesday at 70,035.71, down 648.27 points or 0.92%. It had closed on Tuesday at 70,683.98. Trading Economics reported that investors took profits on Wednesday after the index had reached a three-month high. The US dollar was buying approximately 158.03 yen at 8:45am AEDT. London and Europe London's FTSE 100 closed on Wednesday at 10,458.5, down 0.79%. Germany's DAX fell 1.35% to 25,104.36. France's CAC 40 fell 1.22% to 7,769.21. ABC News quoted a note from Ray Attrill, head of foreign exchange strategy at National Australia Bank. The note said "Fiscal strain in France is pushing bond spreads wider across the Eurozone." A bond spread is the gap between the yield on one government's bonds and the yield on another's. A wider spread means lenders are asking the first government for a higher return. Currencies The Australian dollar was buying approximately 69.6 US cents at 8:45am AEDT. It was at approximately 69.8 US cents at the same time on Wednesday. The US dollar index, which measures the US dollar against six major currencies, was at 102.28 late on Wednesday, up 0.44% from 101.83 on Tuesday. The euro was buying approximately US$1.120 at 8:45am AEDT. The US dollar was buying approximately 158.03 yen. Commodities Gold futures for December closed on Wednesday at US$4,136.70 an ounce, down 1.20%. The contract month is the month a futures contract falls due. Silver for December fell 2.50% to US$60.05 an ounce. Copper for December closed at US$6.6415 a pound. Brent crude for December closed at US$100.95 a barrel, up 0.37%. West Texas Intermediate, the US oil benchmark, closed at US$88.94 a barrel for November delivery, down 0.56%. Iron ore was flat at approximately US$91.60 a tonne, according to ABC News. Today's diary No Australian Bureau of Statistics release is scheduled for today, according to the ABS release calendar. 4:30pm Sydney time. The Reserve Bank of Australia publishes its monthly Official Reserve Assets figures. Samso Concluding Comments All four main US share indices fell on Wednesday, and the Russell 2000 fell the most at 1.31%. ABC News reported that bond yields climbed and that markets were worried about government debt, with France in focus. Germany's DAX and France's CAC 40 each fell more than 1%, and gold fell 1.20%. ASX 200 futures were down 0.7% at about 7:30am AEDT, and there is no ABS release today. General information only. This is not financial advice.