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John Lynch did not mince words when talking about Aaron Donald's impact.

That would give Judge as many as 19 games to get ready for the playoffs.

What Happens When A Metal The West Can't Live Without Runs Short

At the end of last week, the Trump administration's halt to tungsten scrap exports took effect, as the U.S. and its allies confront a deepening supply crisis and race to find new supplies. 

China's export restrictions are accelerating the West's campaign to secure ex-China supplies, reinforcing our U.S.-China decoupling theme and placing a major spotlight on the largest Western tungsten miner: Almonty Industries.

The miner operates in Portugal and is ramping up its prized Sangdong Mine in South Korea, which is expected to account for roughly 40% of Western tungsten production once it reaches full capacity.

To understand the global tungsten crisis, readers must first remember the metal's critical importance to the modern economy.

Tungsten is essential to defense systems, industrial tooling, semiconductors, automobiles, energy infrastructure, electronics, artificial intelligence, and the power-grid buildout. Put simply, it is one of the building blocks of the industrial economy, yet its supply chain remains fractured and heavily exposed to China.

Almonty CEO Lewis Black's latest snapshot of the global tungsten market, the severity of the supply crisis, and the West's race to secure ex-China supplies deserves close attention. 

Almonty is emerging as the leading pure-play Western tungsten miner and a critical supplier capable of helping break Beijing's grip on the market. 

Here is CEO Black's assessment: 

Everyone keeps asking me when the tungsten price falls back. I understand the instinct, but it's a distraction from the thing that matters: what happens when a metal you can't do without becomes hard to buy. The last two weeks gave a few answers to that.

As of last week, no American can export tungsten scrap without a license. All of it – 100 percent – stays home, at least for the next year.

The plants that turn that scrap into something useful are already sitting in the United States, most of them European or Japanese owned. We collect it here, process it here, and the midstream product goes on to Europe. That cycle carries on exactly as before, and the country is in no danger of drowning in a pile of metal it can't handle.

So why the rule, with all its talk of national defense? Because a handful of American operators had found a tidier deal: sell the scrap straight to China at a premium – the very country the rule is built to shut out. That's the door Washington just shut. Who said patriotism was dead?

Those businesses know who they are. And so do we.

Tungsten markets

Michael Dornhofer, ISBP – assessment as of 28 August, 2026

For the situation on the tungsten market, a Chinese associate, with whom I spoke this week, found the right words, "off-season sleep". So, prices in China and in the west are stable. APT CIF Rotterdam/Baltimore is still around 3000 USD/mtu WO3 for APT; concentrate prices are between 2400 and 2600. Anyhow, while some downstream customers hope (or should I say dream) that prices might drop soon, other stakeholders see a persisting supply problem in all western countries.

Why can one see the situation so differently? It is a fact that tungsten prices in China are now significantly below western prices, and it is widely understood that China had set the world market price for several decades. What's different now is that since February 2025, for each individual export of intermediates, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce has to grant an export license. And as they are very restrictive (only 28 t APT could be exported in first half 2026!) there is now a firewall between Chinese domestic market and rest of the world.

Everyone understands that, as China stood for 80 per cent of the tungsten world market, without APT/Oxide from China, there is a shortage on tungsten raw material in the west. And if there is not enough tungsten raw material, coming from new sources, there is no logic argument that prices should drop significantly.

Of course, after the tungsten price went up eightfold in just over one year, there can always be a technical correction, but in principle, prices cannot go back, even close to levels, seen previously.

Michael Dornhofer is founder of ISBP (Independent Supply Business Partner) in Graz, Austria. He has spent more than 20 years in tungsten, including 13 years at Wolfram Bergbau und Hütten, Sandvik's tungsten business, and has worked as an independent agent and consultant to the tungsten and hard metal industry since 2019.

The buyback, and the thinking behind it

Last week the board approved buying back up to $300m of our own shares – about five percent of the company – over three years.

It comes out of Sangdong's earnings, spread across those three years, so the balance sheet stays intact. The convertible we priced in June dilutes existing shareholders by a little over 7 percent if it converts. Buy back 5 percent, and most of that dilution goes away. We priced the convert with the stock around $21, so anywhere below that, buying our own stock is the smartest money we can spend.

Yes, it can look like money in one door and out the other. But it comes in from the mine and goes back to the people who own the mine. That's where it belongs.

The alternative was buying a boat. An institutional shareholder asked what I'd do with the cash; I admitted I'd been eyeing up a superyacht. He asked if he could use it. Two weeks a year, I said. He wanted to know whether the SEC would allow it. Nobody's tested that, as far as I know – but the upkeep would have ruined me anyway. So my dream of a floating company vehicle will have to wait. (Edit from David Hanick – Almonty's in-house counsel: Please note that this is said in jest. Mr Black is most definitely not buying a superyacht.)

Down on volume, up on margin

Panasqueira's output dropped this quarter, and that was the plan. When the tungsten price is this high, we go after the low-grade ore – the material we'd ignore in a normal market because it wouldn't pay. High prices make it pay. So we mine it and bank the margin, and the good grades stay in the ground for another day. Fewer tonnes come out of the mine. More money goes in the till. And because we're taking ore we'd otherwise have left alone, the reserve lasts longer.

That's the difference between an operator and a junior sitting on someone else's money. A junior takes what the market gives it. An operator decides what to mine and when. The number that matters came in at a little over 60 percent – gross margin for the quarter. On a 136-year-old mine, running a fifth of the grade we have waiting in Korea. Show me another mine that does that.

What I'm reading

The auto industry's China crisis

Honda's chief executive Toshihiro Mibe went to China to see how its carmakers build so fast, and left rattled. New models there take under two years – half the time Honda needs. Xiaomi, a phone maker that started building cars two years ago, has swapped the assembly line for robots and single-piece castings and turns out a thousand cars a day. Honda's own sales in China have gone from 1.6mn in 2020 to 640,000. "We have no chance against this," said Mibe. His answer: pull thousands of engineers into a revived R&D arm and hope they can close the gap. Being the giant counts for nothing when someone hungrier builds faster.

For when the screen goes dark

Europe pays for everything by phone now, and yet weirdly the value of banknotes in circulation keeps climbing. Cash is vanishing from the checkout and piling up in drawers and safes instead. When a blackout knocked out power across Spain and Portugal last year and the card terminals died, the only money that still worked was the paper kind. The European Central Bank has drawn the obvious lesson and now treats cash as resilience – the backup for the day the network falls over. Or the zombie apocalypse finally comes.

Buying from yourself

Nvidia is putting up to $105bn behind a new data center for OpenAI – which OpenAI will then fill with Nvidia's own chips. Money goes out as investment and comes back as revenue. The market calls it circular financing, and it's nervous about it. The figure started at a reported $250bn and shrank to $105bn once investors saw the shape of it. Nvidia's boss insists it's nothing of the sort, and that OpenAI will pay its own way. Maybe. But if the customer needs the chipmaker to fund the purchase, you have to ask whether it can stand on its own.

Opinion

Everyone forecasts the West staying short of tungsten for years. On the face of it, that's everything a producer like me could want: high prices, customers with nowhere else to go. For the most part, it is. But it also comes with challenges.

Most shortages destroy demand through price. Something gets too expensive, so people use less or design it out. Tungsten doesn't work that way. You use so little in any finished product, whether a cutting tool, a gearbox or a semiconductor, that the price could double and nobody would stop building the thing.

What kills tungsten demand is absence. When a manufacturer can't get the material at all, the line stops and the product goes unbuilt, and a shuttered plant rarely reopens. And you can't engineer around it: in the work tungsten does, nothing else has the hardness or takes the heat. So a shortage suits me right until it starts shutting Western factories for want of material. I'm better off with more tungsten reaching those factories, not less – even if it comes from my rivals. A starved supply chain loses the demand I depend on.

In the media

Hot again, apparently. The Wall Street Journal ran the numbers this week under the headline "Tungsten Stocks Are Hot (Again)," with us on track for our best month in over a year. What I liked was the "again" – the paper remembers when tungsten was a curiosity, a metal people bought in little cubes for the novelty of the weight.

The retail crowd is paying attention too. Michael Sikand – an investor with a good nose for these things – put out a long interview the two of us did. His three-line version for his audience: no AI chips and no missiles without tungsten, the price up roughly sevenfold since China pulled back, and Sangdong capable of around 40 percent of the world's non-China supply. Not a bad summary of a story that took me a decade to build.

A defense take on the shortage. National Security News set out why Western militaries are exposed on tungsten: 30 years with barely any US production, and a Pentagon rule that from January turns away Chinese-origin metal. They quoted me saying what I've said for years – America walked away from tungsten and left China to it.

A television crew went down Sangdong. Korean broadcast news took its cameras underground – blasting in the dark, tungsten glowing blue under UV light, 4.7 kilometers of tunnels – and came up with the same conclusion we keep making: a mine the West wrote off 30 years ago is now one of the few places outside China that can actually supply the metal, with most of its output already spoken for by the United States.

Watch Here: Sangdong At Center Of Western Race To Secure Tungsten

. . .

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 07:45

Fans began suspecting the newlyweds had become dog parents when images from inside their lavish Madison Square Garden wedding were leaked.

Fans began suspecting the newlyweds had become dog parents when images from inside their lavish Madison Square Garden wedding were leaked.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s oldest son was evacuated from the United States in response to a threat against him.

Ukrainian authorities say that Russia has launched a large aerial assault on Ukraine’s capital and surrounding region.

Page Six confirmed on Aug. 19 that Harry and Markle planned to return to the UK with their children — Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet — at the end of the month for an “extended period.”

Page Six confirmed on Aug. 19 that Harry and Markle planned to return to the UK with their children — Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet — at the end of the month for an “extended period.”

A substitute teacher was sentenced to 15 years in prison for repeatedly having sex with a 13-year-old boy and filming the encounters -- as the pervert's lawyer offered a mind-boggling excuse for the abuse, according to federal prosecutors.

Trump's Venezuela Energy Gambit A 'Major Problem' For Europe

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

In the end, it happened as it had to: The United States will likely play a decisive role in the future development and marketing of Venezuela’s oil and gas reserves.

On Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a corresponding deal on his Truth Social platform, describing it himself as "THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY." According to the U.S. president, the United States secured “majority U.S. control” over more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in Venezuela, spread across 17 oil fields – and, as Trump emphasized, “at no cost to the American taxpayer.”

BREAKING NEWS: The United States of America has just entered into an Agreement with the Country of Venezuela on, THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY! At my direction, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, working closely with Highly Respected… pic.twitter.com/lLl44Fp7cs

— Commentary Donald J. Trump Truth Social Posts On X (@TrumpTruthOnX) August 28, 2026

Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves. The overwhelming majority, however, consists of extra-heavy and heavy crude, which must be diluted and processed through an elaborate procedure. Particularly in Texas, there is refinery capacity specifically designed for this type of processing – a circumstance that further reinforces America’s role as the world’s largest oil producer. Around 20 percent of the world’s oil reserves are located in Venezuelan territory, making the country the largest member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, in terms of reserves.

OPEC is entering one of its most severe phases of erosion as a result of the agreement with the United States: In April, the United Arab Emirates had already announced its withdrawal from the cartel, effective May 1 – now Venezuela, a second founding member dating back to 1960, threatens to undermine the cartel’s common production logic. The agreement was negotiated with the Washington-backed transitional government under President Delcy Rodríguez in Caracas. Rodríguez, a former vice president of the country, is serving as interim president after Nicolás Maduro was arrested by U.S. special forces in January 2026 and taken to the United States, where he has been held ever since on drug-related charges.

What could the deal look like in practice? Little is known, but it can be assumed that the United States will establish a special-purpose company with participation from major oil producers such as ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips or Chevron, the only U.S. company with an operational presence in the country. The agreement still rests on shaky constitutional ground, however, since the Venezuelan constitution requires state control over the core activities of the oil industry. Will Caracas therefore first have to reform its laws?

Economically, the project sounds interesting. According to Rodríguez, the agreement is expected to initiate around $100 billion in investment in Venezuela’s oil sector. Caracas will also benefit: Over the 25-year term of the agreement, the country expects at least $209 billion in tax revenues – a gigantic leap forward, considering that the socialists under Maduro had also run this crucial economic sector into the ground, turning it into a self-service machine of corruption and cronyism.

The decision was announced just weeks before Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit, which is expected to take place in Washington on September 24. Xi therefore faces a fait accompli: The two important sources of oil for China – Venezuela and now Iran as well – appear to be blocked and are coming under U.S. political control. Donald Trump is thus creating facts in the rivalry between the two superpowers – control over oil is a bargaining chip, measured in millions of barrels of daily oil production.

With regard to the conflict with China and the increasingly difficult relationship with the EU, Trump’s geopolitics follows the logic of the sledgehammer: America First, debates are unwelcome. One can criticize this strategy; one may even have to. However, in order to obtain a complete picture, one should view the events from the American perspective: Until the energy-policy shift, the deregulation of fossil fuels and the unleashing of the fossil resources available in the United States, EU climate policy dominated in Washington. Above all, it was Barack Obama who, in 2009, submitted to the CO₂ diktat of ideological desk-bound technocrats from Davos, Brussels and Berlin. Since Trump’s return to the White House, the motto has been: Drill, Baby, Drill – now also by means of a state agreement covering Venezuela’s oil and gas fields.

The United States divides the world into Manichean categories – those who stand by its side are good, whether in the conflict with Iran, in gaining access to Greenland’s rare earths, or in removing the dictator Maduro in Venezuela. Those who refuse to submit are bad. The European Union undoubtedly belongs to the latter category and is increasingly perceived in Washington as an enemy.

For the EU, which is heavily dependent on energy imports, Trump’s aggressive energy policy could become a major problem.

Having fallen out with Russia and virtually powerless in the face of the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, Europe is dependent on American liquefied natural gas supplies. This is precisely why the question must be asked: What prevents Europeans from activating their own energy reserves? A rhetorical question: Brussels and Berlin have become trapped in ideological delusion and in the hope that the specter in the White House will be gone again in two and a half years and that they can return to business as usual. In this case, “business as usual” means that the United States will once again submit to European climate rules as it did before.

But that is still a long way off.

And the role of the eternal childish antagonist does not suit the Germans particularly well. Destructive climate and energy policy, whose provisional climax will be the flooding of the coal mines of the Ruhr region, appears childish in an international context – economically, it is simply a catastrophe. All of this weighs heavily – it burdens the country’s political culture, it tears its economy apart and exposes the ever-deeper divide between citizens and politics. In retrospect, it proves tragic that the country’s decisive affairs of state, its energy policy and the economy in general were placed in the hands of left-green degrowth fanatics and socialists.

It is hardly surprising that the path to the future technology of nuclear power appears blocked, and that no one dares to pursue fracking or the development of Germany’s own gas fields in the North and Baltic Seas. The country is intellectually and ideologically paralyzed and is now paying the economic price for its pre-Enlightenment ideology.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 06:30

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Restaurants Face GLP-1 Squeeze As Adopt-Or-Die Inflection Arrives

Bernstein's latest GLP-1 tracker has Eli Lilly's Mounjaro leading script growth, with downstream effects compounding pressure on the restaurant industry already facing weakening consumer confidence, as gas prices nationwide remain above a politically sensitive $4 a gallon in late summer.

Turning to UBS's latest note on the restaurant industry, Dennis Geiger, who covers U.S. restaurants and consumer discretionary names, wrote in a note on Sunday that restaurant investors are struggling to identify opportunities across the space amid sharp share-price volatility, weakening consumer confidence, growing uncertainty over the second-half outlook, and increasing GLP-1 adoption. 

He points to a widening divide across the industry:

• Fast casual: Cava and Chipotle remain preferred, while Wingstop is attracting interest after its selloff. Investors see the NFL season, easier comparisons, and new value promotions as potential catalysts for Wingstop.
• Casual dining: Brinker International and Cheesecake Factory remain favored because of resilient sales momentum. Sentiment toward Darden is more cautious amid signs of slowing Olive Garden same-store sales.
• Quick service: McDonald's faces the most negative sentiment among large global chains as weak U.S. trends collide with difficult comparisons. Domino's is attracting more interest because of its depressed valuation and expectations for improving sales.

Geiger's note touched on not just an increasingly bifurcated U.S. consumer environment and dismal University of Michigan consumer sentiment, but also pointed out that quick-service chains face a particularly difficult combination of sluggish traffic, persistent inflation, and GLP-1 adoption.

Geiger cited a new survey from the National Restaurant Association that showed GLP-1 impacts: users are ordering smaller portions and fewer indulgent items after starting the wonder anti-fat drug, with Gen X cutting desserts and portion size most aggressively and Gen Z more likely to swap entrees for appetizers, add fiber, and drink less alcohol. The result is pressure on check averages and mix, especially desserts, sugary drinks, alcohol, and oversized entrees, rather than an immediate collapse in visits.

He expanded: 

While GLP-1 users are less frequently going out to eat at restaurants, ordering takeout and using delivery, users are purchasing a meal / snack / beverage from a restaurant / coffee shop / snack place more often than non GLP-1 users, according to a recent webinar from the National Restaurant Association (NRA). GLP-1 users skew toward a higher-income cohort that is likely to eat out more frequently, but as GLP-1s become more accessible (w/ lower prices and oral forms), adoption across income cohorts should be more balanced. We note the NRA also indicated: a high percentage of GLP-1 users agree that healthy menu items are available at restaurants; GLP-1 users enjoy going out to restaurants; and users indicate going out to eat is a way to socialize, suggesting changing eating habits do not greatly affect affinity for dining out. Additionally, a high percentage of users indicate better communication of healthy options and portion size options is preferred at restaurants. The NRA highlights 1) value is not just the amount of food for a low price, but can include high protein, other nutrients, or health benefits for a low price, 2) growth in snacking and smaller portions among GLP-1 users, 3) lower ticket averages for users offset by increased visit frequency, add-on, and upcharges, and 4) beverage consumption away from alcohol, towards non- alcoholic options. The NRA also called out select brands with menu changes that have responded to GLP-1 preferences, including Chipotle, Olive Garden, and Shake Shack.

Figure 1: After starting GLP-1 drugs, users increasingly order smaller portions and less indulgent items.

The second chart shows why consumers are pulling back on alcohol at restaurants, citing mostly personal preferences and health concerns.

Figure 2: Reduction in alcohol consumption is driven by personal preferences and health reasons.

Traders are still searching for winners inside an increasingly pressured restaurant complex as several headwinds hit at once: weakening confidence, $4 gasoline, a bifurcated consumer, and rising GLP-1 adoption.

No Direction in S&P500 1500 Restaurant Index 

UBS's Geiger and the NRA survey only suggest that consumers are trading down, ordering smaller portions, skipping desserts and sugary items, and drinking less alcohol - more selective, not necessarily boycotting visits. This is a lower-ticket issue that restaurants must adapt to.

Professional subscribers can read the full note here at our new Marketdesk.ai portal

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 05:45