The Baskets: Looking Ahead to Q3 2026 (Part 1)
In this article, we’re taking a look at the MMMT high conviction baskets for Q3 2026 with a look at the underlying thesis and the stocks within them.
Part 1 is looking at the following baskets:
Critical Minerals
Grid Infrastructure
Miners
Here’s a snippet from my web-app:
Critical Minerals
YTD the MMMT Critical Minerals Index has returned 54.6% vs SPY at 9.0%.
It’s been a volatile basket to hold with stocks like MP surging to $100 last summer before falling back to the mid $50s today. USAR has been another volatile play (which we hold in the core portfolio) jumping from $14 to $44 and back to $19 in the space of 8 months.
We’re now ~12 months on from China’s restrictions on rare-earths and permanent magnets which sent the likes of USAR and MP soaring. However, the market so far in 2026 has seemingly forgotten about the technological revolutions ahead in AI, physical AI, and even quantum and the rare earth requirements for this.
Valuing these plays at the moment is a challenge. It’s likely why USAR and MP and LYC have struggled recently.
But despite what the stocks are doing the underlying thesis remains clear:
Brazil remains the big opportunity which is one of the main reasons I am building my USAR position. It’s by far the most “nearshore” ally to the US and depending on the presidency ballot in October this year, the outlook for Brazil as an ally could be extremely advantageous.
Flavio Bolsonaro has already attempted to position Brazil as this ally to the US and the US’s solution for mineral dependency.
This is one reason why I hold USAR in my core portfolio.
USAR acquired Serra Verde which owns the Pela Ema mine. Pela Ema is the first large scale producer or rare earths outside China. It’s also signed a 15 year supply agreement with the US government making it quite a clear bet on this rare earth thesis.
I also have Sunrise Energy Metals (SREMF) in the critical minerals basket. It currently trades at $12.49. Here’s what I sent to paid subscribers back in March when SREMF traded at $5.50.
TLDR Summary for critical minerals:
Markets are not pricing in the physical bottlenecks of the AI buildout. Huge amounts of copper, gallium, silver, gold, platinum, scandium, and niobium are needed for the continued data centre buildout, and the physical AI world we are entering into.
It appears today that the US is technologically superior to China in models but China owns over 70% of the worlds critical minerals supply chain. That’s not a strong position for the US to be in.
Last chance to grab TrendSpider at a steep discount.
Get 38% off + $98 in free upgrades if you sign up by July 8th at midnight — once it’s gone, it’s gone.
TrendSpider is the charting platform I personally use, which has helped me spot the most in my investing.
If you manage your own portfolio the way I do, here’s what TrendSpider provides:
- Scanners that surface technical and fundamental setups before they’re obvious - the kind of early entries that turned OUST and NBIS into two of my biggest winners this year.
- Sidekick AI to dig into market data and portfolio holdings without jumping between five different tabs.
- Charting and automated technical analysis to track support levels, breakouts, and moving averages on every name you hold or are watching.
- Real-time options, sector rotation, market breadth, news, and sentiment to understand the broader market context behind any single trade.
This is one of TrendSpider’s biggest sales of the year. If you’ve been thinking about trying it, this is a good opportunity to sign up with a discount.
Grid Infrastructure
Grid resilience is one of the most underappreciated levers for technological dominance over the next decade.
Forget just AI - think technology in general (robotics, quantum, everything). The most developed economies today are massively constrained by a very outdated grid that is in need of a complete rebuild.
So much so, that the White House invoked the Defense Production Act (Section 303) in April 2026 which specifically focuses on transformers, substations, high voltage breakers. It’s evidence that the domestic capacity is now not sufficient to meet the baseline demands moving forward.
IEA (International Energy Agency) projects are spending ~$550 billion in 2026 alone (that’s a 20% increase YoY).
Total (add in all end-use electrification like EVs, electrified industrial processes etc) electricity investment is now nearing $2 trillion per year.
Now let’s get into the specifics of what this means from an investment angle.
The wider theme is obvious, but how quickly this is actually achievable is a completely different story.
With how fast technology is moving, and how large the demands are for electricity, the grid buildout appears structurally far too slow to keep pace with the demand. In the US alone, data center buildout is projected to go from 21GW in 2026 to 84GW annually by 2030.
Given that grid interconnect is the constraint here, perhaps the bigger opportunity therefore lies in the companies enabling buyers to generate or access power on their own timeline, and not to do with the companies selling generation to the utilities.
Capacity simply isn’t growing fast enough to cover the 21GW to 84GW of US data center demand so there needs to be an alternative.
The biggest winners will be those that allows a buyer to generate power without relying on the utility. The answer today is Behind-The-Meter fuel cells…i.e. Bloom Energy (BE) or gas engine names like Innio (INIO).
The other angle is SMRs but the target for them is likely a 2028-2030 story…perhaps even later. I put SMRs in the Uranium basket and also as a long duration hedge on the grid problem. I haven’t included it in the power grid upgrade basket yet.
Miners
As you’ll know, I’m fairly aggressively building my positions in silver, copper, and scandium miners and I continue to believe this is:
One of the most important divergences in the market today.
One of the safer ways to expose yourself to the technological revolution without investing in the tech directly.
