Reviewed September 2026 against USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries and MP Materials investor disclosures.

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The Short Answer: What to Look For First

The best rare earth stocks to buy right now are the ones tied to production you can actually verify: US mine output, refining capacity under construction, and offtake agreements with named buyers — not just a ticker riding a supply-chain headline. The best gold mining stocks are the ones with published all-in sustaining cost (AISC) figures, disclosed reserve life, and audited production reports, because gold miners live and die by their cost curve relative to spot price. Neither category rewards guessing. Both reward reading the actual filing.

Here is what the public record shows as of the most recent USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries: the United States mined 51,000 metric tons of rare earth oxide (REO) in mineral concentrates in 2025, valued at $240 million, according to the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 — Rare Earths. China mined 270,000 tons the same year — roughly 69% of the world total of 390,000 tons. That gap is the single most important number in this whole topic, and it is the reason “buy rare earth stocks” keeps showing up as a search: investors are trying to find US and allied producers that reduce exposure to a market one country dominates by a factor of more than five.

This guide walks through both stock categories using only figures that are published and sourced, shows you a repeatable way to screen new candidates as fresh quarterly numbers come out, and includes a calculator so you can size your own exposure to rare earth price swings rather than trust someone else’s percentage.

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Rare Earth Stocks: The Production Numbers Behind the Hype

Before looking at any specific ticker, it helps to separate three things that get conflated in most “top rare earth stocks to buy” roundups: mine production (digging the ore out of the ground), separation/refining (splitting the ore into individual oxides like neodymium and praseodymium), and magnet manufacturing (turning refined oxide into the NdFeB magnets that go into motors, wind turbines and defense systems). A company can be strong in one stage and absent in the others, and that distinction is exactly what moves the stock.

MP Materials: The Only Vertically Integrated US Producer at Scale

MP Materials operates the Mountain Pass mine in California, the only rare earth mine currently producing at commercial scale in the United States. According to the company’s own production release covered by Yahoo Finance’s coverage of MP Materials’ 2025 production records, the company produced 2,599 metric tons of NdPr (neodymium-praseodymium) oxide for the full year 2025 — a company production record. Set that against the US total REO figure above: Mountain Pass’s NdPr output alone is a meaningful share of the entire US 51,000-ton REO concentrate figure once you account for NdPr’s typical concentration within a mixed rare earth ore body. This is the number to track quarter over quarter if you’re evaluating MP Materials specifically — it appears in the company’s quarterly earnings releases at investors.mpmaterials.com and in SEC EDGAR 10-Q filings, both of which post more current figures than any article can.

What NdPr Actually Sells For

NdPr is the commercially important pair because neodymium and praseodymium alloy is what goes into permanent magnets. As of June 2026, NdPr alloy benchmark spot price sat at $109.55/kg, with praseodymium metal priced separately at $124.88/kg and neodymium metal at $121.95/kg, per industry market data published by rare-earth-mining.com’s June 2026 rare earth market report. These are the figures that determine whether a rare earth miner’s quarter was profitable — a producer’s margin moves directly with this spot price, since NdPr is typically 60-70% of a rare earth producer’s revenue even though it’s a minority share of the tonnage mined. rare-earth-mining.com updates this tracker weekly, so check it directly rather than relying on a stale print if you’re modeling a position today.

Named Rare Earth Equities to Screen

Beyond MP Materials, the names that come up most often in “rare earth mining stocks list” searches include Lynas Rare Earths (Australia’s Mt Weld mine plus a Malaysian processing plant, and the only non-Chinese company separating heavy rare earths at scale), China Northern Rare Earth (the largest producer by volume, majority state-owned, trading on the Shanghai exchange rather than US markets), and Arafura Rare Earths (an Australian developer with an approved but not-yet-producing project at Nolans). USA Rare Earth has announced a magnet manufacturing facility, but as of this review there is no public disclosure of its commercial order book or actual production volumes — treat any specific output or revenue claim about that company as unverified until it appears in an SEC filing or an audited investor release, and check its own investor relations page for the current status before acting on secondhand claims. For deeper coverage of specific rare earth tickers and how to weigh them against each other, see our rare earth and rare metals ETF breakdown and our rare earth stock picks analysis.

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Gold Mining Stocks: What “Best” Actually Means

“Top gold mining stocks to buy” is a search that generic finance content answers with vague adjectives — “strong balance sheet,” “attractive valuation” — without naming the metric that actually separates winners from laggards: all-in sustaining cost (AISC) per ounce relative to the spot gold price. A miner producing at $1,100/oz AISC when gold trades at $2,600/oz has a completely different risk profile than one producing at $1,700/oz, even if both show the same headline production volume.

The individual FY2026 consensus earnings estimates and valuations for Barrick, Agnico Eagle and Newmont are not yet published in a form we can cite responsibly here — those numbers live in each company’s own 10-K/10-Q filings with the SEC, updated quarterly, and in analyst consensus trackers that refresh continuously rather than annually. Rather than repeat a stale percentage-return estimate, the more durable approach is the checklist in the next section: pull each candidate’s most recent 10-Q, find its AISC and reserve life, and compare it against the current spot price yourself. For a Canada-specific breakdown of names and mine locations, see our dedicated guide to gold stocks to buy in Canada, and for African gold-producing geography and context, our piece on the world’s leading gold-producing nation.

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Comparison Table: Gold vs. Rare Earth Equities

Gold and rare earth mining stocks respond to different drivers, so screening them side by side means comparing different metrics — not the same P/E ratio across both. Use this table as a framework for what to pull for each name on your list, not as a ranked buy list:

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A Repeatable Method for Screening Any Mining Stock

This is the part of the article that should still work correctly whenever you read it, whether that’s this quarter or two years from now, because it doesn’t depend on today’s price. Run any gold or rare earth candidate through these six checks before adding it to a watchlist:

1. Pull the most recent official production figure, not a press release summary.
   For US rare earth production, that’s the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, published annually each January (the FY2026 edition is due January 2027) at pubs.usgs.gov. For an individual company like MP Materials, that’s the quarterly earnings release at investors.mpmaterials.com and the audited 10-Q on SEC EDGAR — always more current than any article, including this one.
2. Check the cost metric against the live spot price, not last quarter’s spot price.
   For gold, that means AISC per ounce against LBMA or COMEX spot, both of which publish daily. For rare earths, that means NdPr-weighted production against the current NdPr alloy benchmark — rare-earth-mining.com’s market report updates weekly.
3. Identify which stage of the supply chain the company actually operates in.
   Mining, separation/refining, and magnet manufacturing are three different businesses with three different risk profiles. A company that only mines raw ore and ships it to China for separation carries different exposure than one that separates and refines domestically.
4. Check reserve life and permitting status, not just current output.
   A mine with five years of proven reserves left is a different investment than one with twenty, even at identical current production.
5. Look for named offtake agreements or customer contracts, not just capacity announcements.
   A commissioned processing facility with no disclosed customer contracts is a cost center until proven otherwise — verify actual orders in the company’s own investor disclosures before crediting a production ramp that hasn’t happened yet.
6. Cross-check single-country or single-mine concentration risk.
   With China holding roughly 69% of 2025 global rare earth mine production, any non-Chinese producer’s stock story is partly a bet on how fast that concentration changes — track the next USGS release to see whether the US share of 51,000 tons out of a 390,000-ton world total is growing or flat.

🚀 Want to visualize subsurface mineral prospectivity before a company even reaches the production-reporting stage?
Explore our satellite-driven 3D mineral prospectivity mapping. It identifies drilling hotspots and helps you evaluate exploration-stage claims before they show up in a 10-Q.

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Calculator: Rare Earth Price Exposure per Share

Rare earth miners don’t sell “rare earths” as one commodity — their revenue is dominated by NdPr specifically. Use this calculator to estimate how much a company’s annual NdPr revenue moves for every $1/kg change in the NdPr price, based on a production figure and share count you enter yourself (the defaults reflect MP Materials’ reported 2,599-tonne 2025 NdPr output and the June 2026 $109.55/kg benchmark, both cited above — replace them with any company’s own disclosed figures).

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Video Resources: Mining, Exploration & ESG

These videos cover gold and rare earth exploration techniques, regional geology, and satellite-based prospecting across several producing regions:

• 🎥 Gold Rush Arizona: History & Modern Gold Mining Revival
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• 🎥 Australia’s Gold Mining Revolution: Tech & Sustainability
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• 🎥 Rare Earth Boom: AI, Satellites & Metagenomics in Canadian Critical Minerals
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• 🎥 Manitoba Rare Earth Soil Hack | Critical-Mineral Boom
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• 🎥 Arizona Copper Boom: AI Drones & ESG Tech
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• 🎥 Arlington Gold Hunt: AI & Hyperspectral Tools Reveal BC High-Grade Zones
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• 🎥 Satellite Mineral Exploration: AI Soil Geochemistry in British Columbia
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• 🎥 Satellites Spark a New Alaska Gold Rush
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Satellite Data & Farmonaut: Non-Invasive Mineral Intelligence

Before a rare earth or gold prospect ever produces a tonnage figure worth citing, it has to be found and mapped. Farmonaut applies Earth observation data and spectral analysis to screen large land areas for mineral potential without drilling or ground disturbance — relevant to due diligence on exploration-stage names long before they generate the kind of production numbers cited earlier in this article.

• 📊 Pinpoints high-potential mineral zones (gold, rare earths, copper, and more) in days rather than months, at a reported cost reduction of up to 80–85% versus legacy ground survey methods.
• 🌱 No ground disturbance during the early screening phase — relevant where permitting and land-access constraints slow conventional exploration.
• 🌏 Mineral detection work spans 18+ countries and 80,000+ hectares, including gold exploration context in Africa alongside rare earth, lithium, nickel and copper targets globally.
• 🔬 Spectral analysis is used to flag both broad-band and rare mineral signatures, which can help narrow a shortlist of exploration-stage companies before a resource estimate exists.

Learn more about Farmonaut’s satellite-based mineral detection.

For MP Materials specifically, see how the company frames its own community and domestic-supply investment: MP Materials community investment and resilience.

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Risks and Common Screening Mistakes

• ⚠ Treating “rare earths” as one commodity. NdPr, dysprosium, terbium and europium each have distinct supply/demand balances. USGS publishes only bulk rare earth oxide and alloy benchmarks — individual heavy rare earth element pricing is fragmented across specialty traders and not centrally published, so verify which specific elements a company actually produces before assuming its revenue tracks the NdPr price quoted in this article.
• ⚠ Citing a capacity announcement as if it were a production figure. A commissioned processing facility is not the same as one shipping product against signed customer contracts — check the company’s own investor disclosures for actual order book detail rather than the press release framing.
• ⚠ Ignoring AISC entirely when screening gold miners. Production volume without a cost-per-ounce figure tells you almost nothing about margin resilience if gold price falls.
• ⚠ Relying on a single year’s USGS snapshot indefinitely. The Mineral Commodity Summaries update annually every January — a 2025 production figure should be checked against the following January’s edition before being treated as current.
• ⚠ Skipping jurisdiction and single-mine concentration risk. With China holding roughly 69% of 2025 global rare earth mine production and MP Materials as the only commercial-scale US producer, a portfolio built entirely on “rare earth exposure” without checking underlying country and mine concentration is not actually diversified.

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Conclusion: Building a Watchlist That Survives a Downturn

The durable version of “best gold mining stocks to buy” and “best rare earth stocks to buy” isn’t a fixed list — it’s the six-step screen above, applied fresh to whatever the current quarterly filings say. Gold miners live or die on AISC versus spot; rare earth miners live or die on NdPr-weighted revenue versus the NdPr benchmark, and on how much of their business sits in mining versus separation versus magnet manufacturing.

• 🥇 For gold, pull the latest 10-Q AISC figure and compare it to the current spot price before trusting any headline return estimate.
• ✨ For rare earths, start from the hard numbers: 390,000 tons produced globally in 2025, 270,000 of them from China, 51,000 from the US, and 2,599 tons of NdPr specifically from MP Materials’ Mountain Pass mine.
• 🌅 Re-run the screen when USGS publishes its next Mineral Commodity Summaries each January, and when each company reports its next quarter — this article’s numbers are a starting baseline, not a permanent ranking.

Use the comparison table, the six-step method, and the exposure calculator above as a repeatable process — not a one-time list — for evaluating any new gold or rare earth name that shows up on a screener.

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FAQ: Gold & Rare Earth Mining Equities

For further technical details, see our satellite-based mineral detection overview.