Why Now? The Case for Gold and Fortune Bay
The Gold Thesis for 2025: Why Strategic Capital Is Rotating into Juniors
Gold is capturing headlines, and capital in 2025. In the first half of 2025, gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded an inflow of $38 billion, the largest semi-annual inflow in five years and the highest since the first half of 2020. The global gold price has surged by 26% year-to-date, hitting unprecedented highs around $3,500 per ounce in April 2025.
The reasons why are as varied as they are urgent: persistent inflation, rate policy uncertainty, and a geopolitical landscape that seems to shift daily. Historic forces are returning gold to the center of the investment narrative, with investors seeking both security and opportunity in a world long on volatility and short on certainty.
But as this new cycle unfolds, the most strategic capital isn’t just buying bullion. It seeks leveraged growth in undervalued juniors leading to the next wave of discovery and development. That’s where Fortune Bay comes in.
A Gold Market Transformed: The Bull Case for 2025
Supporting this dynamic, central banks set new records with their gold purchases in early 2025. Their accumulation, combined with robust inflows of $38 billion into gold-backed ETFs, pushed global gold holdings up by 397.1 metric tonnes to the highest level since August 2022.
According to data from the World Gold Council, this influx drove gold holdings up by 397.1 metric tons, reaching their highest level since August 2022. Alongside this robust investor demand, central banks continued aggressive accumulation throughout the first quarter, contributing to record levels of gold reserves globally. Gold prices have reflected this heightened interest, rising approximately 26% year-to-date and nearing $3,500 per ounce in April 2025.
This combination of record central bank buying and unprecedented ETF inflows underscores a paradigm shift in gold’s role, not only as a traditional hedge but increasingly as a compelling performance driver within global capital allocation.
Why Juniors? The Rotation Is Underway
It’s a familiar cycle for veterans: when gold moves, the majors get attention first, but the real outperformance arrives as the cycle matures, and capital rotates into juniors. Here’s why 2025 is shaping up as an historic window for discovery-driven companies:
The Pipeline Problem
Major gold producers are confronting a critical issue: reserve depletion and a lack of significant new gold discoveries is preventing the largest companies from replacing the gold they extract each year. For instance, global gold mine production peaked at 3,656 tonnes in 2018 and reached 3,644 tonnes in 2023, essentially flat growth despite rising demand. Meanwhile, available evidence shows world gold reserves are under pressure, with total global reserves at 59,000 tonnes as of 2023 but falling at several major companies as existing mines mature.
For gold investors, this stagnation in mine supply has created heightened urgency and premium valuations for advanced juniors with credible gold resources in geopolitically safe jurisdictions. This industry bottleneck is matched by renewed institutional focus on early-stage and mid-tier gold explorers: in 2023, institutional and central bank buying hit record levels, bolstering the gold investment case as supply lines tighten.
Fortune Bay is positioned as one of the few juniors advancing new gold ounces in top-ranked Saskatchewan. The company is working to unlock value not only in Saskatchewan but also through its Poma Rosa project, which offers additional exposure to discovery potential in another promising mining jurisdiction: Mexico. This combination of advancing new resource ounces and diversifying project risk positions Fortune Bay at the intersection of the current supply/demand imbalance and capital rotation into gold, underpinning the market inefficiency seen in well-placed junior gold companies.
Market Inefficiency in Juniors
Junior gold equities remain discounted relative to the intrinsic value of their projects. While the price of gold has surged, recently surpassing $3,500 per ounce and marking a 30% increase in 2025, many junior gold explorers have continued to lag behind. This disconnect persists, largely due to several years of capital starvation, heightened risk aversion in the sector, and ongoing regulatory delays. Equity financing for junior mining companies, while showing some high-profile successes, remains challenging, with most explorers still struggling to access capital on favorable terms. Sector-wide, exploration budgets remain tightly constrained, even as government initiatives like the Ontario Junior Exploration Program offer targeted relief to select projects.
Although inflows into gold funds are now on track to hit all-time highs in 2025, this renewed investor interest has yet to fully translate into robust capital flows for early-stage juniors, underlining the persistent inefficiency in how the market values these companies versus the physical commodity and senior producers.
Why Fortune Bay? A Model Built for This Moment
In this context, Fortune Bay is uniquely positioned. With a business model that is not built on speculation, but on disciplined advancement of proven assets in world-leading jurisdictions.
- Anchored by Goldfields: A Tier-One Saskatchewan Asset
Our 100%-owned Goldfields Project isn’t just another greenfield story. Recent resource updates and a robust Preliminary Economic Assessment, supported by an extensive database and historic infrastructure, set a strong technical and commercial foundation.
Saskatchewan is a global outlier in a mining jurisdiction consistently ranked among the best policy, predictability, and access to power, water, and skilled labor. As highlighted by the Fraser Institute’s annual mining survey, it’s a province enjoying cross-party support for resource development and a regulatory path that rewards early engagement with local communities and Indigenous rightsholders, a process in which Fortune Bay has been a partner. - Disciplined, Value-Creating Development
Our approach aligns capital deployment tightly to value milestones. Each investment is carefully directed to de-risk the asset and strategically position the company for accretive growth. - ESG as a Core Value, Not a Checkbox
Responsible development isn’t a talking point, it’s a pillar of how we create value. We have integrated ESG best practices from the outset, starting with deep-rooted community and Indigenous engagement. For Fortune Bay, success is measured not just in ounces added, but in trust built. - Positioned at the Lassonde Inflection
Anyone who’s followed the sector knows the Lassonde Curve is real: the largest value appreciation comes as juniors de-risk projects through resource definition, economic studies, and permitting well before construction risk or capital-intensive development. With upcoming catalysts like our Goldfields PEA update and continued permitting progress, Fortune Bay is strategically timed for that “sweet spot” of value creation.
Looking Ahead: Gold, the Junior Sector, and Fortune Bay
As the remainder of 2025 unfolds, most signs point to continued gold strength and a thematic rotation into juniors. With sector-wide M&A likely to accelerate, visibility and valuation gaps for advanced developers like Fortune Bay may narrow quickly.
For our stakeholders, we’re committed to delivering on every milestone, maintaining clear and transparent communication, and ensuring our capital is put to maximum productive work. We invite you to subscribe for ongoing updates, so you’re first to hear news as the cycle accelerates and as we advance Saskatchewan’s next major gold project.