r/investing
This 52-week copper chart is kind of ridiculous: One is off the scale
Highlights massive 52-week returns in copper stocks, focusing on NovaRed Mining's explosive gains and its 2026 exploration plans.
- Copper exposure is being rewarded by the market, with smaller cap miners showing significant upside when investor attention increases.
This chart made me stop for a second.
It shows trailing 52-week price return on a true linear scale, and the gap is not small.
NovaRed Mining: +2,287%
Hudbay Minerals: +184.8%
BHP Group: +86.5%
Rio Tinto: +78.1%
Freeport-McMoRan: +71.9%
The Metals Company: -22.4%
The point is not that $NRED is “better” than BHP, Rio, Hudbay or Freeport. Those are major/liquid copper names with completely different profiles.
The point is that copper exposure has clearly been getting rewarded across the market, and the smaller end of the sector can move much harder when investors start paying attention.
For NovaRed, the next part is not about staring at the past 52-week return. It is about whether the company can justify more attention through fieldwork.
$NRED / $NREDF has Wilmac, a 16,078 hectare copper-gold project in BC’s Quesnel porphyry belt, about 10 km west of Hudbay’s Copper Mountain Mine. That nearby mine is useful district context, not proof of mineralization at Wilmac.
The 2026 program is what I am watching now:
expanded soil sampling
four IP/AMT geophysical surveys
initial drilling contemplated for fall 2026, subject to receipt of the drill permit
No upcoming-program drill results yet, so the next phase is simple: soil data, lab calibration, geophysics, target ranking, then drilling if the permit process lines up.
My read: the chart shows the market already noticed $NRED. The real test now is whether the 2026 work can turn that attention into a stronger technical story.