Precious metals and copper prices plunged on Friday after the US Fed chair nomination triggered profit-taking, with April gold futures crashing 11.4% to $4,745/oz and silver suffering a record 35.9% drop to $78.53/oz, while March copper briefly fell 9.5% to $5.76/lb before closing 4.5% lower at $5.92/lb. The sell-off wiped billions from miners: Newmont fell 11.5% to a $122bn valuation, Barrick 19%, and silver-focused Pan American Silver 13.7% to $23bn. Diversified and copper majors were hit less severely, with BHP down 4.8%, Rio Tinto 4.3%, Glencore 3.4% and Southern Copper 8.5%, yet most leading miners remain strongly positive year-on-year.

MAX Power Mining has defined a new natural hydrogen drilling target at the Bracken prospect on the Saskatchewan–Montana border, complementing its confirmed Lawson discovery on the 475 km-long Genesis Trend. The Bracken well, planned to spud in February pending licensing, sits within the 75 km-wide Grasslands project and was sited using 34.3 line-km of proprietary 2D seismic integrated with legacy seismic to map basement architecture, structural pathways and migration corridors. MAX Power aims to use Bracken as a calibration point to test basin-scale continuity and repeatable, scalable natural hydrogen systems that may also host helium.

Glencore remains deadlocked with Quebec over the future of its nearly 100-year-old Horne copper smelter in Rouyn-Noranda, where arsenic emissions must be cut from current levels to 45 ng/m³ by March and 15 ng/m³ from 2027—still five times the provincial standard. The company is weighing a US$200 million modernisation to meet the 15 ng/m³ target but is demanding an 18‑month transition period and guarantees against tighter future limits before committing. Closure would also threaten the Canadian Copper Refinery in Montreal, which relies on Horne’s 210,000 t/y copper and precious metals output, and comes amid an authorised class action over historical emissions.