Highlights

• The 2025 commodities rally drove rare earth stocks higher on geopolitical anxiety, but price action shouldn't be confused with actual supply-chain transformation or operational progress.
• The critical bottleneck remains midstream: without scalable refining, separation capacity, and manufacturing infrastructure, exploration rallies are speculative instruments, not industrial milestones.
• Markets repriced rare earth optionality and future strategic value rather than current margins, but discipline in distinguishing liquidity-driven moves from fundamentals will determine who survives 2026.

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Bill McConnell’s “Dollar Bill” in The West Australian column captures the mood of 2025 perfectly: small caps roaring back to life, brokers swapping multi-bagger war stories, and commodities rediscovering swagger. Gold exploded. Silver doubled. Defense, AI-adjacent metals, and rare earths were swept into the same speculative current. For market psychology, the piece is spot-on. For supply-chain truth, it blends signal with noise.

What’s notable for rare earth investors is how easily geopolitics and price action were conflated with operational progress.

What the Column Gets Right

The macro setup is directionally accurate. A weaker U.S. dollar, rate-cut expectations, and renewed trade-friction expectations tied to a potential second Trump administration pushed critical minerals into the geopolitical spotlight. Rare earths benefited from policy anxiety, not end-market acceleration. That distinction matters.

It’s also fair to note that large-cap producers like Lynas Rare Earths surged alongside gold equities. Markets were repricing optionality—future strategic value—rather than current margins. That pattern aligns with 2025’s capital flows.

Where Enthusiasm Runs Ahead of Evidence

The column’s weakest moments come when share-price explosions are treated as proof of supply-chain transformation. Claims tied to microcaps—some rising thousands of percent on “nearology,” presidential comments, or thinly substantiated rare earth exposure—deserve more skepticism.

Price action is not production. Ground adjacent to a deposit is not a mine. A resource is not a refinery. And none of these are magnets. While the column nods to excess, the tone risks normalizing liquidity-driven moves as fundamentals.

This matters because rare earths are not gold. Their value is trapped midstream. Without separation capacity, metallurgical validation, permits, offtake, and financing, rallies remain speculative instruments, not industrial milestones.

The Supply-Chain Reality Check

What’s missing is the chokepoint: refining and manufacturing. Rare earths rose in sympathy with geopolitics, but the West still lacks scalable midstream capacity. That constraint—not exploration excitement—will determine who survives the next cycle.

Investors should read 2025 not as a rediscovered golden age, but as a stress test: capital returned, yes—but discipline will decide 2026.

Bottom Line

“Dollar Bill” nails the vibe. _Rare Earth Exchanges_™ insists on the math. The ASX partied in 2025. Rare earth supply chains did not magically mature. The difference will define who keeps their gains when the music fades.

Citation: The West Australian, Dec 25, 2025.

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