Almonty Rides the Geopolitical Tungsten Wave, but the Stock’s 85% Volatility Tells the Real Story

Almonty shares fell 24% in a month despite Sangdong mine production and expanded offtake deal, as high volatility tied to China's tungsten export restrictions persists.

China’s grip on the global tungsten market has only tightened since February 2025, when Beijing slapped export curbs on five critical minerals in retaliation for US tariffs. With the country controlling roughly 80% of worldwide supply and the US having produced none domestically since 2015, Western buyers face a structural shortage that shows no sign of easing. Almonty Industries, with its Sangdong mine now producing in South Korea, sits at the center of that supply-chain drama. Yet the company’s stock, for all the bullish narrative, remains a study in whipsaw trading.

On Friday, shares of the tungsten producer rose 4.37% to close at C$19.33 on the Toronto Stock Exchange. That small bounce, however, sits inside a much messier picture: the stock has lost 15.9% over the past seven days and roughly 24% over the past month, even as its 12-month gain stands at a formidable 216%. The gap between the year-ago low and the current price is vast — the 52-week high of C$33.35 was reached on April 17, 2026 — but the retreat from that peak now exceeds 41%, dragging the shares well below both the 50-day moving average of C$24.61 and dangerously close to the 200-day line at C$18.96.

What makes the sell-off so striking are the operational milestones Almonty has just delivered. Since July 1, 2026, the Sangdong mine in Gangwon Province has been processing stockpiled ore into sellable tungsten concentrate, transitioning the company from developer to actual producer. Hard on the heels of that achievement, Almonty expanded its long-term offtake agreement with Global Tungsten & Powders (GTP), extending the contract to 21 years from first delivery and boosting the committed volume by 40% to 4.41 million metric ton units. The revised terms, which run into the late 2040s, guarantee a minimum annual volume of 210,000 MTU at prices that lift revenue per unit by 6.3% over the contract’s life. Almonty has pegged expected annual sales under the deal at roughly $490 million.

The market’s reaction to this apparent de-risking has been anything but calm. The stock now carries an annualized 30-day volatility of roughly 86%, and its relative strength index stands near 39 — close enough to oversold territory that technical analysts are watching for a potential stabilisation, but not low enough to signal a clear reversal. The fact that the current price sits less than 2% above the 200-day average suggests that long-term trend followers are still present, but the 21% discount to the 50-day line underscores just how quickly sentiment has shifted since April.

That volatility cuts both ways, and it is rooted in the very scarcity premium that has driven the stock. China’s export regime has evolved from simple licensing into a full-fledged administrative system that caps the number of approved exporters and curbs domestic mining quotas. Each new headline from Beijing can send Almonty shares into a spike or a slide, and the same momentum-driven buying that tripled the stock from its 2025 low can evaporate just as fast when traders rotate out. The company itself may now have a revenue stream that looks more like a utility than a junior miner, but the market still prices it with the hair-trigger reflexes of a speculative bet.

With a market capitalisation of roughly €3.48 billion, Almonty is far from a penny stock. Yet that valuation embeds an assumption that Sangdong’s ramp-up will deliver not just volume, but margins that justify the multiple. The current contract covers only the mine’s Phase I production, and the real test lies in whether operational execution can keep pace with the expectations baked into the share price during the April euphoria.

For investors, the next few months will not be about whether the mine works — it is already running. Nor will they be about the durability of the offtake deal, which is locked for two decades. The open question is how the market reconciles a genuinely improved business profile with the kind of volatility that has defined Almonty since the scarcity trade took hold. That is a story of patience versus price momentum, and it is one that no single contract, no matter how long, can resolve on its own.