Three Tickers Nobody's Talking About That Are About to Get Very Loud
Rare earth dominance, AI infrastructure's forgotten backbone, and a nuclear IPO nobody priced correctly

Ticker Ratings
Everyone's busy staring at $INTC surging 23% to an all-time high and patting themselves on the back. Meanwhile, a Bloomberg Podcasts segment this week quietly dropped a bombshell: USA Rare Earth (USAR) just announced a transformative acquisition of Serra Verde — the only mine outside Asia producing all four magnetic rare earths — backed by a $1.6 billion proposed DOC funding commitment and a 15-year 100% offtake deal with government-backed price floors. The US and EU even signed a critical minerals coordination agreement the same week. If you're not paying attention to this one, I genuinely cannot help you.
Then there's X-Energy (XE), a nuclear firm that just IPO'd at $23/share — already above its $16–19 target range — opened at $30.11, raised over $1 billion, and had Ken Griffin personally pocket roughly $300 million on a $100M bet. With the Strait of Hormuz choking global energy flows and LNG exports becoming a geopolitical weapon, small modular reactor plays like XE are about as well-positioned as you can get without being on OPEC's speed dial.
The crowd is always late. These aren't — yet.