What you need to know: • August was a mixed month for all metals, including the mining equities. • Gold continues to outperform other metals, up 2.3% on the month and up a staggering 29% over the last year. Mining equities performed in line with broader markets, following significant outperformance in July, read our July report here. • Battery metals suffered again this month, and the waiting game continues. • M&A was slow in August but we expect things to ramp up as we enter the fall given the low multiples the junior explorers and developers are trading at relative to the heavily cash flowing producers at 10%. The SIL’s sharper selloff (-5.2%) was expected as in July it was up over 10% yet the underlying metal was down ~2%. The precious metals prices and the mining equities were mostly in line with broader markets with the TSX up 1.0% and the S&P500 up 2.3%. We sound like a broken record, but battery metals continue to struggle with lithium and cobalt being down 11% and 9% respectively, while nickel posted a slight gain, up 1%. Patience remains a virtue in this space as we await a definitive turnaround in this market before getting involved, however, when a turnaround finally happens, we expect large gains, quickly. M&A was slow again in August as the market takes a breath for summer. We expect a new wave of M&A to start in the fall as there remains an abundance of opportunities with explorers and developers trading close-to-trough multiples while majors produce significant cash flow with gold at $2,500/oz. One notable transaction that took place in August was Gold Fields (GFI:NYSE) announcing an agreement with Osisko Mining (OSK:TSX) to acquire the Company in an all cash transaction at C$4.90/share (55% premium), valuing the acquisition at C$2.16B.