We told you...August Stocks To Watch

Dear readers, last Wednesday August 5th, 2026 we put six stocks to watch in front of you around one idea: that capital was rotating into hard assets and the miners had not caught up to it yet.

Four trading sessions later, here is what the tape says.

The framing first, because it matters more than the numbers.

Four days is not a verdict on anything.

It is long enough to see how a basket behaves through a couple of distinct market moods, and short enough that a different start date would tell a different story.

We publish this because we would rather show you the record while it is checkable than pick a window later that flatters us.

Measured from Wednesday, August 5th's close to Tuesday, August 11th's close.

Closing prices. TSX listings quoted in Canadian dollars with no currency conversion applied.

Put an equal amount into each of the six on Wednesday's close and hold to Tuesday's. Here is that against simply owning the index.

Illustrative only. Assumes fractional shares, no commissions, no currency conversion on the two Canadian listings, and no dividends. Index levels: S&P 500 7,723.55 to 7,728.20; Nasdaq Composite 26,363.44 to 26,445.45.

Every name in the basket finished green. The index finished essentially flat. That is a spread of roughly six percentage points across four sessions, and it is worth being precise about where it came from.

Thursday was ugly. Hecla dropped 4.1% and Coeur fell 10.2% as both reported quarters the market disliked. The S&P 500 was close to flat. Had we written this note on Thursday afternoon, the table would have looked very different and we would have had to say so.

Friday reversed it. The July jobs report showed payrolls falling by 23,000 against expectations for a gain, pushing rate-hike bets further out. Gold rallied toward $4,300 an ounce. Coeur added 11.1%, GDX 7.1%, Hecla 6.2%, Snowline 10.4%. The S&P 500 closed at a record on the same news. That day proved nothing about the thesis, because everything went up together.

Monday and Tuesday are the interesting part. The S&P has now fallen two sessions running, pressured by the US and Iran standoff over the Strait of Hormuz, rising crude, and caution ahead of this week's inflation print. The miners kept climbing anyway. Hecla added 4.2% Monday and closed higher again Tuesday. Coeur added 4.3% Monday and kept going.

That is the closest thing to evidence in this table. On Friday the basket and the index moved on the same catalyst, which tells you the miners carry more leverage to a soft labour print, not that they are independent of the market. On Monday and Tuesday they moved opposite the index. Two sessions is thin, but it is the right thing to be watching.

Hecla Mining (NYSE: HL), +7.38%. First, a correction to last Wednesday's note. We quoted 2026 guidance of 15.1 to 16.5 million ounces of silver and first quarter revenue above $411 million. Hecla's second quarter release trimmed the top end of that guidance to 15.1 to 16.1 million ounces while improving the unit cost targets, and second quarter revenue came in at $333.9 million, an 11% miss against consensus. Our figures were stale and we should have caught it. What the market chose to price instead was the cash: operating cash flow up 61% year over year to $175 million, free cash flow of $136 million, record production at Lucky Friday, silver output up 8% sequentially to 4.2 million ounces, and no long-term debt. A revenue miss that the stock rose 7% through is a useful signal about what this market currently rewards.

Snowline Gold (TSX: SGD), +7.08%. The move needs context. Snowline announced a C$150 million bought deal on Thursday and traded down on it, which is the normal reaction to a financing. Friday's 10.4% recovery is therefore part sector rally and part bounce off that dip. On substance, the raise removes funding risk from the Rogue project work, which is the single most important thing for a pre-production name. There is still no cash flow here and that remains the entire risk.

Coeur Mining (NYSE: CDE), +6.66%. Last week we called this the weakest link and said it undercut our own confirmation argument. Four days later it has recovered fully and then some. The quarter was genuinely poor: record revenue of $1.09 billion but adjusted earnings of 12 cents against 26 cents expected, with slower ramps at the newly acquired Canadian assets. Roth Capital cut its target to $19 and Scotiabank to $26.50, both keeping constructive ratings. Since then Coeur has doubled its 2026 exploration budget to a record $158 million at Palmarejo and Las Chispas, and it is carrying over $1 billion in cash alongside $121 million of buybacks and a new dividend. The market appears to have decided the ramp delays are timing rather than damage. We would treat that as a hypothesis, not a conclusion, until third quarter numbers land.

Cameco (NYSE: CCJ), +4.54%. Steady, which is what an anchor position is for. Nothing company-specific drove the move; it tracked the broader rate repricing. Uranium remains the one position in this basket whose demand story does not depend on the gold trade continuing.

Ivanhoe Mines (TSX: IVN), +4.30%. Still the laggard against the copper price, which is exactly the setup we described, and four days has not changed it. Second quarter results showed profit of $46 million and adjusted EBITDA of $179 million, including $152 million attributable from Kamoa-Kakula. Ivanhoe also issued a clarification last Thursday on a Reuters report about a Democratic Republic of Congo concentrate export ban. Jurisdictional headline risk of that kind is part of the price here, and it is the reason the gap to copper exists rather than an argument that the gap is wrong.

GDX, the sector proxy we listed almost as an afterthought, returned 7.42%. The five individual names averaged 5.99%. The ETF still beat the stock selection, though by a narrower margin than it did after two days.

If the thesis is a sector re-rating rather than a set of stock stories, the sector instrument has expressed it at least as well as our picks over this stretch, without single-name earnings risk and without currency exposure. That may reverse as the individual catalysts play out. We will keep reporting it either way.

Whether the miners hold up through this week's inflation print. Two days of moving opposite the index is suggestive; a third week would start to be a pattern.

Whether Coeur's Canadian ramp shows up in third quarter numbers, or whether the guidance reset was the first of several.

Whether Ivanhoe's delivery begins closing the gap to copper, which was the entire reason it made the list.

We will run this same table again in a month, from the same start date, whatever it says.

This newsletter is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not investment advice, not a recommendation to buy or sell any security, and not an offer or solicitation. We are not a registered investment adviser or broker-dealer, and nothing here is tailored to your financial situation, objectives, or risk tolerance.

Past performance does not indicate future results. The four-day period shown here is far too short to evaluate any investment idea and was chosen only because it is the interval since our previous issue. Selecting a different start or end date would produce materially different figures. Securities discussed here, particularly small-capitalisation and pre-production mining companies, carry a high risk of loss including total loss of capital.

Prices are closing prices sourced from publicly available market data and may contain errors. Canadian listings are quoted in Canadian dollars with no currency conversion applied, so returns shown for those positions do not reflect the experience of an investor funding in another currency. Portfolio figures are illustrative and exclude commissions, spreads, taxes, and dividends.

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Insider Stock Picks is published by Connect 4 Marketing Ltd., Brossard, Quebec.