u/Prince_reaper13

AI in mining is easy to dismiss when it is just a press release.

NovaRed Mining, CSE: NRED / OTC: NREDF, just made the MetalCore angle harder to ignore.

The company filed a non-provisional U.S. patent application, No. 19/680,101, for an AI-driven mineral evaluation and transaction management platform.

The key detail is that this filing supersedes the April 17 provisional patent application. A provisional filing gives a temporary patent-pending position. A non-provisional filing is the formal application that actually gets reviewed and can eventually mature into an enforceable patent if approved.

That is a step forward in the IP strategy.

The platform is intended to support parcel-level mineral evaluation, exploration targeting, asset evaluation, transaction workflows and document verification. That is a pretty specific use case.

NovaRed still has to execute at Wilmac. The 16,078-hectare copper-gold project in BC remains the core.

But now the company has exploration, AI platform demand, and a formal patent application all moving at once.

Not investment advice.

NХХT is ripping in premarket, up around 90% near $0.53, and this time the move has a clear catalyst: Q1 results came in better than expected. Revenue was $21.1M, up 29% YoY, and ahead of the $18.1M analyst estimate. The company also beat on EPS, reporting a $0.07 loss versus expectations for a $0.08 loss.

The margin improvement is the part that matters most to me. Gross profit rose to $1.7M from about $518k, while gross margin improved to 8.1% from 3.2%. That points to better route optimization, stronger fleet utilization, and improved operating efficiency in the mobile fueling platform. Adjusted EBITDA loss also narrowed to $1.16M from $3.40M a year ago.

Technically, this is a big test. Benzinga notes the stock is now trading 53.4% above its 20-day SMA and 35.1% above its 50-day SMA, but still below the longer-term 100-day and 200-day averages. That means short-term momentum is alive, while the longer-term trend still has work to do. The obvious level everyone is watching now is around $0.50, because that becomes the pivot after a move this sharp.

The clean read: this is no longer just a policy or energy-theme trade. The company just printed better revenue, better margins, and a smaller EBITDA loss. That gives the move actual earnings support. Now the question is whether $0.50 becomes support or turns into another rejection level after the open.

Not advice.

Long-term small investor here with a normal 9-6 job. Lately I’ve been dealing with this weird mix of jealousy, FOMO, and frustration from seeing people around me seemingly make crazy money trading options.

I’m in my 30s, work full-time, save what I can, invest the “responsible” way, and try to stay consistent. Then I open Instagram or Twitter and see someone posting a screenshot of turning $3k into $20k in a week on NVDA or SPY calls. The worst part is how casual they make it sound, like it was obvious or easy money.

Logically, I know I’m probably only seeing the wins. Nobody is rushing to post the blown-up account, the revenge trades, or the week where they lost half their paycheck. I understand that. But even knowing it, it still messes with my head sometimes.

It makes me wonder if I’m wasting my time grinding at work while other people are pulling in my monthly salary from a few trades. And honestly, some of these people don’t seem smarter, more disciplined, or more financially responsible. They just found options, hit a few big trades, and now it feels like they’re living in a totally different financial world.

For anyone who has dealt with this mindset before, how do you stop comparing yourself?

Not looking for therapy answers, just curious if other people here have felt the same thing.

The older North Lamont soil number that got attention was 379 ppm Cu, but the latest NovaRed update adds a bigger historical geochem detail.

NovaRed Mining, CSE: NRED and OTCQB: NREDF, now says historical copper-in-soil values on trend to the north reached up to 1,125 ppm Cu, per company PR. That is roughly 3x higher than the earlier 379 ppm number people were discussing.

The reason I think this matters is not the soil number alone. Soil geochemistry can be noisy. The stronger point is that the copper-in-soil appears to line up with near-surface chargeability and deeper conductivity anomalies from the 3DIP/AMT model.

That changes the setup from "there is copper in soil" to "there is copper in soil sitting over a 3D geophysical target model." Still early, still pre-drill, but more interesting technically.

Not financial advice. Do you put much weight on soil results when they line up with geophysics, or is drilling the only thing that matters?

I saw an interesting copper thread and poll that used Wilmac as the example, and the numbers made the broader copper deficit story feel much more concrete.

The thread looked at Wilmac after the Trojan-Condor addition. The project now covers about 39,728 acres, or 62.1 square miles. For scale, that is about 2.7x the size of Manhattan. The model broke the project into four possible Cu-Au porphyry target areas: Wilmac core, Lamont, Plume, and Trojan-Condor.

The poll leaned toward the multi-target view. Only 12% picked a single Copper Mountain-style system. About 31% picked a 2-center Wilmac + Lamont model. Another 18% picked a 3-target district. The largest group, 39%, picked the full 4-target system.

That is what got my attention on $NRED. The company is still in the exploration stage, but the setup is no longer only about one target. After Trojan-Condor, the question becomes whether Wilmac is a larger district-style system with several porphyry centers.

The macro backdrop makes that question more interesting. Global copper demand is about 62B lb per year today. By 2040, demand is projected near 93B lb per year. Without enough new mines, production could fall toward 49B lb per year by 2040. That points to a possible annual gap of 22B-44B lb of copper.

The scale is hard to ignore. A 22B lb annual copper gap would require roughly 143 Copper Mountain-size mines. A 44B lb gap would require roughly 286. That is why new copper districts matter. The market does not need one or two discoveries. It needs a long pipeline of future supply.

The demand stack keeps widening too. By 2030, extra annual demand could reach about 15B-23B lb from grid upgrades, EVs, AI data centers, renewables, defense, heat pumps, robotics, drones, space, and SMRs. By 2040, that extra demand could rise to about 29.5B-47.2B lb per year.

AI data centers are a clean example. A data center uses about 59,500 lb of copper per MW. If global data center capacity reaches 550 GW by 2040, that implies roughly 32.7B lb of copper tied to data center infrastructure over time.

The U.S. picture also looks tight. The U.S. consumes around 3.5B lb of refined copper per year, while domestic mining plus scrap production is around 2.0B lb. That leaves a gap near 1.6B lb per year.

That is why I keep coming back to copper exploration. New mines take too long. Discovery to production can run 15-20 years. Grades are falling. Permitting is slow. If the world needs dozens or hundreds of new Copper Mountain-scale supply sources over time, early district-scale exploration becomes more important.

For NRED, the first real test is simple: can drilling eventually confirm a copper-gold porphyry center under the geophysics? If Wilmac, Lamont, Plume, and Trojan-Condor start lining up as a multi-target system, the copper deficit backdrop gives the story a much bigger frame.

The copper story is no longer about growth. It is about scale.

Global demand is projected to rise from 28 million tonnes in 2025 to 42 million tonnes by 2040. That is a 50 percent increase. At the same time, supply is expected to fall short by about 10 million tonnes per year without major new mines.

That gap is not small. It is the size of multiple large mining countries.

Now add the timeline. The average copper mine takes about 17 years from discovery to production, with more than 12 years spent before construction even begins.

This is why the market starts looking earlier.

AI and data centers are part of the pressure. Global data center capacity is projected to grow from about 100 GW in 2022 to around 550 GW by 2040. That is more than a 5x increase, with copper demand from data centers rising from about 1.1 million tonnes to as much as 2.5 million tonnes.

At the same time, EVs use about 2.9 times more copper than traditional vehicles, and grid investment is expected to reach about $7.5 trillion by 2040.

The demand side is accelerating. The supply side is slow.

That is the backdrop for early stage companies.

NovaRed Mining (NRED) is still pre drill, but it sits in that supply pipeline. The company controls more than 16000 hectares in the Quesnel porphyry belt, about 10 km from Copper Mountain, and is working toward drill targets with about 80 line kilometres of geophysics.

Nothing here guarantees a discovery.

But the math explains why projects at this stage are being watched earlier than before.

NFA.

If the supply gap is around 10 million tonnes per year, how early do you think the market has to start pricing the projects that might fill it?

KоBold’s Zambia project is being discussed as a massive copper development, and it is. A mine producing over 300000 tonnes per year would be one of the major new supply sources. And it is backed by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman, which is bullish in itself.

The math shows why the copper problem is bigger.

Projected copper demand increase by 2040: about 14 million tonnes per year

One KoBold-scale mine: about 300000 tonnes per year

Coverage of the demand increase: 300000 / 14000000 = 2.1 percent

So even a huge new mine covers only around 2 percent of the added demand.

That is why the market is looking further down the pipeline.

New copper supply does not appear quickly. Exploration, drilling, resource definition, permitting, financing, and construction can take more than a decade. By the time a shortage is obvious, the projects needed to solve it should already be years into development.

NоvaRed Mining (NRЕD) is the kind of early-stage name that fits into that pipeline. It has no resource yet and no drilling results, so risk is still high. But it controls a large copper-gold land package in a known BC belt, near Hudbay’s Copper Mountain mine.

The company has expanded Wilmac to more than 16000 hectares and is moving toward geophysical target definition. That is the step before drilling.

This is why young copper companies are getting more attention. The world needs new supply before the mines exist.

Not financial advice.

If one major mine only covers about 2 percent of the future demand increase, how many early-stage copper projects does the market need to start tracking now?

One thing that doesn’t get talked about enough is how much damage comes from trading in the wrong conditions.

Most strategies work but only in the environments they’re designed for. Trend setups need momentum. Mean reversion needs range. Breakouts need expansion. When those conditions aren’t there, even good setups fail.

The problem is that traders still feel the need to be active. So they force trades in low-quality conditions, and over time those small losses add up.

What improved my results more than anything wasn’t better entries it was recognizing when the market isn’t offering good opportunities. Sitting out feels unproductive in the moment, but it’s often the most profitable decision.

Oil pushing into the $120+ range isn’t just another spike it’s the market starting to price in a longer disruption scenario. When forecasts move higher at the same time as the actual price, it usually means expectations are shifting, not just reacting.

The detail that stands out is what’s happening downstream. Refiners are reporting stronger margins, which points to tightness not just in crude, but in usable fuel products. That’s where pressure shows up first in the real economy.

For companies tied to fuel and energy delivery, that environment matters. Pricing becomes more dynamic, supply chains get stressed, and demand for reliable delivery doesn’t go away it often increases. That’s part of why names like $NXXT start getting more attention when the energy side tightens.

Feels like the market is moving from “temporary shock” to “this might last longer.”
How are you positioning around that?

Not advice.