According to some estimates, on the first day and a half of the Iran conflict, nearly 12,000 kilograms of this "war metal" were vaporized. |
In roughly 36 hours, the equivalent of 0.02% of the entire world's annual tungsten supply was turned to dust. Fired through artillery shells, embedded in armor-piercing rounds, and packed into the tips of missiles screaming across the Persian Gulf. |
Twelve thousand kilograms gone in a weekend, and… |
Almost nobody in the investment world is talking about it. |
They're watching oil. They're watching gold. They're watching the Strait of Hormuz and the LNG tankers rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope. |
And they should be… those are real, serious disruptions. |
But while the world is looking left, I'm looking right. |
There's a metal most people have never thought about. One quietly entering the most severe supply crisis of any commodity on the planet. |
A metal so critical to modern warfare that without it, fighter jets don't fly, missiles don't penetrate, and tanks don't survive. A metal where one country controls 79% of global production and just slammed the door shut on exports. |
That metal is tungsten. |
And the story unfolding right now is one of the most asymmetric setups I've seen in a long time. |
The "War Metal" You've Never Heard Of |
Tungsten has the highest melting point of any metal on Earth, 3,422°C. The highest tensile strength, and it's so dense that projectiles made from it punch through armor plating like a bullet through paper. |
There is no substitute. |
Not in armor-piercing ammunition. Not in kinetic-energy penetrators. Not in missile components. Not in the cemented carbides used for cutting and drilling equipment. |
Not in the high-speed steels that keep aerospace engines running. Not in the semiconductor fabrication tools that build the chips powering every AI model on the planet. |
None. |
And the world's supply is controlled, almost entirely, by one country. |
China accounts for 79% of global mined tungsten production. It holds 53% of the world's reserves. |
And it controls up to 85% of the refined product, ammonium paratungstate, or APT, the precursor for virtually every tungsten end-product on Earth. |
Yes… China controls 85% of the refined supply. |
If you've been reading my work on rare-earth magnets and China's stranglehold on the materials that power Western defense and technology, this is the same playbook. Maybe worse. |
Because the world is now actively at war, and war eats tungsten like nothing else. |
China Just Called America's Bluff |
In February 2025, China imposed export-license controls on tungsten and tungsten-related products… powders, alloys, APT, the works. |
Within a month, exports of APT, oxide, and carbide dropped to zero. They've since resumed at a fraction of prior volumes. But the damage was done. |
In January 2025, China exported 103 tons of APT. By March, zero. It stayed at zero through May. By June and July, it crawled back to roughly 40 tons a month. By year-end, global tungsten exports had dropped 40%. |
Then Beijing cut its tungsten export quota by another 6.5%. |
In December, they announced exports would be limited to just fifteen approved companies, each required to submit to extensive, mandatory data-sharing procedures before a single gram leaves the country. |
Prices responded exactly how you'd expect. Tungsten prices in Europe have surged over 500% year-over-year amid persistent tightness. |
The United States currently has zero domestic tungsten production. None. The last U.S. mine closed in 2015 and there is no known strategic stockpile. |
The most powerful military on Earth has zero domestic production of a metal it cannot fight without. And no known reserves sitting in a warehouse somewhere. |
In 2022, Congress passed legislation banning Chinese-origin tungsten from U.S. military equipment by January 2027. |
The Defense Logistics Agency has issued public requests to secure 1,700 tonnes of tungsten ores and concentrates. But there's a canyon between issuing a request and actually having the supply. |
China is restricting supply for two reasons. |
Domestically, they're shoring up reserves as their own ore grades decline and environmental regulations tighten. |
Internationally, they're disrupting the global supply chains that produce key defense equipment at a moment of unprecedented global rearmament. |
One research group I follow closely, a boutique firm that's been ahead of the commodity curve for over 40 years, put it bluntly: China's control over these defense metals potentially establishes its international reputation as a global peacemaker. |
While the West scrambles for ammunition, Beijing is offering humanitarian aid to Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq. |
And no, they're not doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. |
If you've paid attention to how China has played the rare-earth game, you know this movie doesn't end with a handshake. |
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The Demand Side Is Exploding |
Global defense spending is on track to reach $3.5 trillion by 2030. In fact, the Pentagon just asked for an additional $200 billion for the Iran war. South Korea just increased its defense budget by 7.5%. |
Japan, the world's largest tungsten importer, is in the midst of a massive rearmament, and China has banned exports to them. |
Germany, Poland, and the rest of NATO are racing to rebuild stockpiles depleted by years of support to Ukraine. |
But the demand isn't only coming from defense. |
Tungsten is critical for the cutting tools that machine everything from engine blocks to surgical instruments. |
It's in the drill bits that bore through rock for mining and oil exploration. It's in the molds that shape the components of every EV rolling off a production line. |
The global tungsten market is small, just 85,000 tons annually, valued at roughly $16 billion. |
For context, the copper market is over $240 billion. When a market this small gets squeezed by both supply restrictions and surging demand, the price moves can be violent and sustained. |
How tight is the market? Tungsten traders are now reporting that the risk of theft has gotten so severe that freight, warehousing, and insurance costs have spiked. |
When people start stealing your commodity off the back of trucks, you've moved past "tight" and into something else entirely. |
The Ex-China Pipeline Is Years Away |
Even if the U.S. government woke up tomorrow and threw unlimited money at the problem, a meaningful ex-China tungsten supply is at least two years away. |
There are projects in development. A legacy mine in South Korea just completed Phase 1 commissioning. One of the world's largest and highest-grade non-Chinese tungsten deposits, with reserves of 7.9 million tons at grades three times the global average and over 45 years of mine life. Some estimate it as high as 90 years. |
An Australian operation in Far North Queensland is ramping up production. A historic mine in Portugal is expanding capacity. |
While these are real projects with real ore in the ground, mining doesn't move at Silicon Valley speed. Permitting, construction, commissioning, ramp-up… it all takes time. |
And in the interim, the deficit only widens. |
One analyst called it "an intractable supply deficit." |
Intractable means there's no quick fix. No emergency lever to pull. No shale revolution coming to bail us out. |
And here's the thing about national security: it's a price-insensitive customer. |
When the Pentagon needs tungsten for missile components, they don't haggle. They don't send it out for competitive bids and wait six months. They pay. |
Inelastic demand meets constrained supply. That's the textbook setup for a sustained, structural price move. |
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What This Means for You |
I'm not here to tell you to go buy tungsten futures. That's not how most of us invest, and it's not how I think about building wealth. |
But pay attention to this space. Ignore it, and you'll regret it. |
The companies positioned to supply tungsten outside of China are sitting on what could be one of the most explosive opportunities in the critical-minerals landscape. This is the same pattern I've written about with rare-earth magnets, with uranium, with copper. |
You have a critical material along with a supply chokepoint controlled by a geopolitical rival. Add to that a demand curve that only goes up. And a handful of ex-China producers who are years ahead of everyone else. |
I've found the company I believe is best positioned to dominate Western tungsten supply for the next decade. |
One asset alone could account for 40% of all non-Chinese tungsten production at full capacity. The ore grades are three times the global average. The mine life stretches past 45 years and they've already locked in defense offtake agreements with the U.S. government. All of this has caused the stock to move like a rocket. |
Which is exactly why I'm not buying it yet. |
I know that sounds counterintuitive. Everything I've just shared with you screams urgency. And the thesis is urgent. But the thesis and the entry are two different things, and confusing them is how smart investors turn great ideas into mediocre returns. |
The setup is A+, but the entry at these levels needs more confirmation. I want to see real production data flowing through the income statement. I want to see the ramp-up hit milestones. I want to see whether the tungsten price stabilizes at these levels or pulls back to something that gives us a wider margin of safety. |
So today I'm adding this company to the Moonshot Minute Premium watchlist, not the portfolio. Not yet. |
I'm sharing the full name, the complete breakdown of the asset, the balance sheet, the dilution risk, and the exact catalysts that would move it from "watching" to "buying." I'm giving Premium Members my target entry zone so they know exactly what I'm waiting for. |
And if you've been reading me long enough, you know what happens next. When I move something from the watchlist to the portfolio, it's because the data confirmed what the thesis promised. That's when the real upside gets captured. Not by chasing, but by being ready. |
If you're a Premium member, the full watchlist brief is waiting for you below, just keep scrolling down. |
If you're not, this is the kind of analysis that lives behind the Premium door — specific names, specific levels, and the discipline to wait for the right entry instead of chasing the headline. You can quickly and easily join Premium below. |
But even if you choose not to join, here's the one actionable thing I want you to do today: Go look at your portfolio and ask yourself: do I have any exposure to critical minerals? Not gold, or silver, or copper. The metals that actually go into the weapons, chips, and machines the world is desperate to build right now. |
If the answer is no, you're not positioned for what's coming. |
The Takeaway |
The world is fixated on oil prices and the Strait of Hormuz and those matter, but… |
The real vulnerability, the one that could reshape defense capabilities, industrial supply chains, and investor portfolios for years, is hiding in a metal most people can't even spell. |
Tungsten is entering a structural supply crisis with no near-term solution. China controls the market and is weaponizing that control. |
Global demand is surging on the back of the largest rearmament cycle since the Cold War. And the West has no stockpile, no domestic production, and no quick fix. |
When the world is looking left, look right. |
That's where the real money is made. |
Double D |
P.S. Here's a screenshot of the current Moonshot Minute Portfolio. I've blurred out the tickers since that information is only for Premium Members, but you can see how we've done so far: |
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🔓 Premium Content Begins Here 🔒 |
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In today's Premium Section, I'm naming the tungsten company I think is the most asymmetric critical-minerals play on the planet and telling you exactly why I'm not buying it yet. The full breakdown, the target entry zone, and the four catalysts that would change my mind. | I hope you've been paying attention because many of our picks are currently beating the S&P by up to 4-to-1 this year. | Most financial newsletters charge $500, $1,000, even $5,000 per year. Why? Because they know they can. | I don't. | I built my wealth the old-fashioned way, not by selling subscriptions. | That's why I priced this at $25/month, or $250/year. | Not because it's low quality, but because I don't need to charge the typical prices other newsletters charge. | One good trade, idea, or concept could pay for your next decade of subscriptions. | The question isn't 'Why is this so cheap?' The question is, 'Why would I charge more?' | 👉 Upgrade to Premium Now | P.S. If this newsletter were $1,000 per year, you'd have to think about it. | You'd weigh your options. You'd analyze the risk. | But it's $25 a month. | That's the price of a bad lunch decision. | And remember, just one good idea could pay for your subscription for a decade. | 👉 Upgrade to Premium Now | |
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