FRC Top Picks The following table shows last week’s top five performers among our Top Picks, including four junior resource companies, and an Adtech company. The top performer, Western Exploration (TSXV: WEX), was up 35%. Last week, WEX announced a fully allocated $6M equity financing.  Top Five Performers Last WeekSource: FRC Last month, companies on our Top Picks list were up 5% on average vs -1% for the benchmark (TSXV).   Source: FRC   Weekly Mining Commentary Last week, global equity markets were up 0.9% on average (up 0.8% in the previous week). The S&P 500, gold, BTC, and AI stocks surged amid a dovish tone from the Fed, suggesting three rate cuts this year, surpassing the consensus forecast of two. Last week, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) became the first major central bank to cut rates. We anticipate the Fed will start cutting rates in June. Meanwhile, Reddit (NYSE: RDDT) had a successful IPO last Thursday, raising US$750M at US$34 per share. The stock is currently trading at US$59.80. We believe these developments should encourage higher investor risk tolerance, prompting increased capital allocation to small-cap stocks, which have significantly trailed the performance of large-cap stocks in the past year.   Source: FRC / Various On average, metal prices were down 2% last week (up 1% in the previous week) amid a stronger US$. Gold producer valuations were up 0.3% last week (down 1% in the prior week); base metal producers were down 2% last week (up 3% in the prior week). On average, gold producer valuations are 20% lower compared to the past three instances when gold surpassed US$2k/oz. Source: S&P Capital IQ&FRC We are maintaining our metal price forecasts.   Weekly Crypto Commentary Prices of mainstream/popular cryptos were up 3% on average last week (down 8% in the previous week). Source: FRC/Yahoo Finance The global MCAP of cryptos is US$2.6T, up 18% MoM, and 117%YoY.   Total Crypto Market Cap Chart Source: CoinGecko   BTC was up 4% last week, while the S&P 500 was up 1%.   Source: FRC/Yahoo Finance The global hash rate of BTC (defined as calculations performed per second/an indicator of network difficulty) is 600 exahashes per second (EH/s), up 2% WoW, and 2% MoM. The increase in hash rates is negative for miners as their efficiency rates (BTC production per EH/s) are inversely linked to global hash rates.  Total Hash Rate (BTC)   Companies operating in the crypto space are trading at an average EV/R of 8.3x (previously 8.2x).   Source: S&P Capital IQ/FRCSource: S&P Capital IQ/FRC    
