Editor's Note: Larry Benedict — the hedge fund legend who beat the S&P 500 by 18 times in 2025 and made his clients $95 million during the 2008 crisis — says Trump's installation of a new Federal Reserve chair is triggering the most significant shift in U.S. markets in nearly 20 years. He has already identified the one ticker he believes will be at the center of the money flows — and he's revealing it completely free. Click here to see the details or read more below…

Dear Reader,

You could have the chance to make big gains from the Federal Reserve’s next move…

But if you wait until its October 28 announcement, you could miss it.

Click here to see the ticker I'm watching, because the money may start moving before Warsh announces their decision.

He’s just raised rates for the first time in more than three years…

The Fed has already signaled another hike could be on the way…

Which means you have a brief window of opportunity to get positioned in one ticker I know very well.

In fact, with this ticker, even a small movement in it can more than double your money.

For example, in January 2022, as the Fed prepared to raise rates, this ticker moved just 4%.

But readers who followed my trade had the chance to make 117% in under a month.

If I’m right, the setup that’s forming could be even bigger this time around.

And you can get started with as little as $300.

I give away the name of the ticker in my short briefing.

Click here and watch it now or risk missing out on this move.

Regards,

Larry Benedict
Founder, The Opportunistic Trader

P.S. The trade could start taking shape before the next Fed announcement so it's critical you are positioned before October 28. See my free pick and learn how to position here.

Monday, October 26, 2026

The Pentagon had the money but ran out of sellers.

In August 2025, the Pentagon tried to buy cobalt. The Defense Logistics Agency posted a tender worth up to $500 million. The government had not tried to buy cobalt since 1990.

Cobalt is the metal inside jet engine turbine blades. Over half the cobalt America consumes goes into superalloys that survive extreme heat. Nothing else works above 1,000 degrees Celsius.

Only three producers outside China could bid. Vale in Canada. Sumitomo in Japan. Glencore Nikkelverk in Norway. Three sellers on the planet for a half-billion-dollar contract. The tender collapsed. Eight extensions. Ten amendments. Canceled on October 15.

The Pentagon had the money. It could not spend it.

The U.S. defense supply chain for cobalt runs through three nodes. When the government tried to buy through them, the process broke. The government has since moved to a $12 billion workaround called Project Vault. But the workaround moves metal through the same three nodes with different paperwork.

I’m about to get into this Cybercab… and it’s going to take me to what Elon Musk called…

“The most epic AI project ever.”

Click here and come with me on this ride…

Because this is all part of Elon Musk’s $320 trillion masterplan.

The U.S. used to keep a large cobalt stockpile. In 1990, the reserve held over 24,000 tonnes. The government sold it off over three decades. Budget cuts and post-Cold War drawdowns drove the sales.

By 2022, only 302 tonnes remained. That was roughly 5% of annual U.S. consumption. The cupboard was bare.

The DLA's tender existed to fill this gap. It was not a speculative purchase. It was an attempt to rebuild a reserve the government had drawn down for thirty years.

Observation: The U.S. cobalt stockpile fell from 24,000 tonnes in 1990 to 302 tonnes in 2022.
Interpretation: Three decades of sell-offs left the reserve too thin to buffer any supply disruption.

China refines 79% of the world's cobalt. The Cobalt Institute confirmed this figure in its May 2026 market report. Strip China out and the list of qualified suppliers gets very short.

The DLA restricted its tender to three producers. Only these three could produce alloy-grade cobalt for jet engine parts outside Chinese control. Amendments during the tender period narrowed the eligible products further.

Think of it as a pipe. The global cobalt supply flows through a wide pipe in China. The non-Chinese pipe is narrow. Three producers narrow. That is a structural fact, not a temporary shortage.

Observation: Only three non-Chinese producers met the DLA's specifications for defense-grade cobalt.
Interpretation: China's refining share leaves too few sellers for competitive bidding.

While the tender sat open, the supply side shifted underneath it.

The Democratic Republic of Congo mines 75% of the world's cobalt. In 2025, the DRC imposed export quotas that run through 2027. The quotas pulled supply off the global market.

Cobalt prices rose roughly 50% between January and March 2025. The DLA's contract was a firm-fixed-price structure. The price locks when the contract is signed. It cannot flex with the market. A 50% price shock made the fixed-price terms unworkable.

The DLA extended the offer period eight times. It issued ten amendments. On October 15, it canceled. A DLA spokesperson told Reuters the agency was "reevaluating its acquisition strategy." It "does not have a target date" for reissuing the tender.

The government authorized $500 million. Three sellers existed on Earth. The tender still could not close.

Observation: DRC export quotas repriced cobalt 50% higher while the DLA's fixed-price tender was open.
Interpretation: The procurement structure could not flex with the market. The tender broke under a price shock it was not built to absorb.

On February 2, 2026, the White House announced Project Vault. It is a public-private partnership. The Export-Import Bank, the federal agency that finances U.S. trade abroad, provided a $10 billion loan. Private capital added $2 billion. The goal is a physical civilian minerals stockpile.

Project Vault sidesteps the DLA's procurement rules entirely. It uses commodity traders as intermediaries. They buy at market rates, not fixed prices. Glencore and Mercuria became the first two participants in September 2026. Mercuria is a global commodity trading firm. Glencore committed $500 million.

Metal is already moving. Glencore bought nearly 2,000 tonnes of cobalt from Weisfisch, a longtime cobalt trader, for about $115 million. CNBC Africa reported that cobalt is expected to flow into the Project Vault stockpile.

But notice the name. Glencore was one of the three eligible producers on the original DLA tender. The government changed the buying mechanism. It did not widen the supplier base. The same few players still control the flow.

Observation: Project Vault uses Glencore and Mercuria to acquire cobalt outside the DLA tender process.
Interpretation: The workaround routes around the broken procurement system but depends on the same three-node bottleneck.

Three forces act on this system. A depleted stockpile forces the government to buy. China's refining share restricts the supplier base. The DRC's quota regime controls the raw material at the source. None of these forces is temporary.

Three signals are worth watching. Does the DLA reissue its own tender, or does Project Vault carry the full load? How fast does Project Vault acquire tonnage? Do DRC export quotas tighten when allocations reset in 2027?

The government found a way to move metal. But the pipe has not gotten wider. If one of those three producers has a production problem, the system has no backup. The same is true if the DRC tightens its quotas. The bottleneck is not a procurement failure. It is a physical constraint. You cannot fix a three-node supply chain with a bigger check.

The U.S. cobalt stockpile is still near empty. The eligible supplier base is still three producers. Project Vault is live. It flows through the same bottleneck the original tender could not clear.

Until next time,
The Navigator