October 3, 2026
Bonus Content: MP Materials Gets $110/kg From the Pentagon. The Market Still Pays $47.
Editor’s Note: Barron’s ranked Larry Benedict’s former hedge fund among the top 1% in the world. He went 20 straight years without a losing year and generated $274 million for his clients. Now he’s revealing the one ticker he believes could benefit most as Trump reshapes the Fed. Read more below…
On October 28, Trump’s new Federal Reserve will announce its next interest-rate decision.
And one overlooked ticker could begin moving before most investors understand why.
That’s why legendary trader Larry Benedict says the time to see this ticker is now…
Not after the decision hits the financial news.
See the ticker Larry is watching before October 28.
In January 2022, Larry positioned his readers ahead of a major Fed announcement.
In under a month, they had the chance to make 117%.
Following another Fed announcement, Larry handed readers the opportunity to make 89% in just 17 days.
Now he believes the October 28 decision could trigger another string of opportunities.
Because the Fed won’t only announce what it is doing with interest rates.
It will also release fresh projections that could change expectations across the entire market.
When that happens, billions of dollars could start moving within minutes.
And Larry believes one ticker sits directly in its path.
Discover why Larry is watching this one ticker.
Larry has recorded a short briefing revealing the ticker completely free…
Along with what he believes could happen when Trump’s Fed makes its move.
But timing matters.
By the time the newspapers explain what happened on October 28, the opportunity could already be passing.
Get Larry’s ticker before the Fed decision.
Regards,
Lauren Wingfield
Managing Editor, The Opportunistic Trader
MP Materials Gets $110/kg From the Pentagon. The Market Still Pays $47.
The arbitrage hiding inside America’s rare earth refining build-out is not subtle. Beijing controls roughly 90% of global rare earth refining capacity and about 90% of permanent magnet production. Washington knows this. So does the Department of Defense, which spent the last 18 months engineering a price floor rather than just a subsidy.
That floor sits at $110 per kilogram for neodymium-praseodymium products, locked in through 2035 for MP Materials (NYSE: MP). Spot NdPr currently trades near $51 to $60 per kilogram. The gap between those two numbers is not a rounding error. It is the structural thesis.
The Refinery Is Where the Money Collects
Mining gets the headlines. Processing collects the toll. Reducing rare earth oxides to refined metals is the current primary commercial bottleneck to establishing an integrated supply chain. Western miners can dig; without domestic separation capacity, the ore still ships to China for conversion.
The 2025 to 2026 period saw a decisive shift toward building domestic processing capacity in direct response to China’s export restrictions. Beijing accelerated that shift itself: export controls introduced in 2025 and 2026 have already triggered sharp dislocations in certain rare earth markets, with licensing and compliance uncertainty now a persistent premium outside China.
Who Owns the Chokepoint
MP Materials is the most structurally protected play. The Price Protection Agreement with the Department of Defense provided a $42.3 million income benefit in Q1 2026 alone, establishing a price floor for NdPr through 2035 and reducing earnings volatility from rare earth price swings. In its second-quarter 2026 results, MP Materials reported NdPr production of 840 metric tons, a 41% increase year over year.
USA Rare Earth is the second anchor. In 2026, the U.S. government committed up to $1.6 billion in proposed support under the CHIPS and Science Act framework. The company’s rare earth metal and magnet manufacturing facility in Blacksburg, South Carolina, broke ground in September 2026, and its Stillwater, Oklahoma magnet facility is ramping a commercial production line with a target to reach a 600 metric ton per year run rate by the end of Q4 2026.
The Risk the Bull Case Skips
China retains the capacity to strategically price rare earth oxides at levels that undermine Western refining economics, a tactic employed historically at moments of geopolitical tension. MP’s stock trades near $47, well below its consensus analyst target of roughly $73 to $75. The 50-day moving average sits near $51 and the 200-day near $57, meaning the stock is below both trend lines. That is a technical overhang, not a fundamental one.
The fundamental case is that Western OEMs, particularly in automotive and aerospace, are increasingly willing to pay a premium for certified non-China material. A $110/kg price floor from the Pentagon makes that premium contractual, not aspirational. That distinction is what the market has not yet fully priced.
Bottom Line
The real question for investors is not whether domestic rare earth refining will scale. Federal capital, defense offtake agreements, and DoD sourcing rules tightening in 2027 make the direction clear. The question is timing. MP’s Q3 earnings are expected November 5, and progress on its heavy rare earth separation circuits will be the number that matters most.
