Backed by insider ownership and a fully funded 2026 drill campaign, Miata Metals Corp. (TSXV: MMET | OTCQX: MMETF) may be entering its most important phase yet.

Somewhere in the rainforests of South America, a drill is turning. And almost every time it stops, it finds gold.

The company behind it is still largely unknown to most investors. Yet management and founders own about 17% of the shares and aren't selling.[7] They are backed by a team with direct experience in Suriname and a track record in gold discovery.

When people put their own capital on the line, the dynamic changes. And right now, timing may be the biggest factor of all.

Gold has just delivered one of its strongest two-year runs in decades. Historically, that has often been the phase when attention begins shifting toward mining stocks, especially smaller explorers with room to rerate.

This isn't a gold rally. It's a repricing of confidence in the dollar.

Gold rarely makes major moves in a vacuum. It tends to surge when confidence in the financial system is being repriced in real time.

That's visible in today's changing world order, and the signs are hard to miss. Trust between some nations is dissolving. Alliances are under strain. While the U.S. dollar remains the reserve currency, government spending continues unchecked as the national debt burden climbs. Recent U.S. actions have weaponized the dollar, motivating countries to move toward neutral assets that aren't subject to the whims of other parties. What fits that bill? Gold.

That helps explain the metal's resurgence. In late 2025, reports showed gold surpassed U.S. Treasuries as a bigger share of central bank reserves for the first time in decades.[1] And the World Gold Council reported that these institutions continue their buying even at today's elevated prices.[2]

Other investors have followed, but not many. Business Insider, citing Goldman Sachs analysis, reported that gold ETFs represent just 0.17% of private U.S. financial portfolios, leaving room for broader participation.[3]

That's the environment in which Miata Metals Corp. (TSXV: MMET | OTCQX: MMETF) is drilling right now. But for investors looking ahead, the more interesting question is what tends to happen next.

When gold runs, junior miners can move much faster

Gold itself can be a powerful asset. But historically it's the miners, especially the juniors, that have delivered the outsized returns.

Even if gold stays flat, many gold mining companies are printing record-high profit margins at current prices.[4] And during this part of the commodity cycle, history tells us these stocks can perform quite strongly.

During the 1969 to 1980 gold bull market, the Barron's Gold Mining Index climbed 1,247% while the S&P 500 returned just 43% according to analysis by Crescat Capital.[5] At the junior explorer level, it was even more extreme. BullionVault highlighted examples of juniors in prior bull markets that delivered gains of 1,000% or more.[6]

The math is simple. When gold prices rise, revenues go up while costs stay mostly fixed. Margins expand sharply. But these stocks are cyclical and timing matters enormously.

When the miners start making money because the gold price rises, their stocks perform. And as their stocks start to perform, they look for places to deploy their capital. One of those places is exploration companies that find the ounces the miners need.

That may be where we are now. Gold has made headlines, the mining companies have moved, but many explorers still have not.

One company actively exploring for gold is Miata Metals Corp. (TSXV: MMET | OTCQX: MMETF).

The majors are already here. Most investors are not.

Miata is not drilling in an unproven region. Its flagship Sela Creek project sits within the Guiana Shield, a gold belt where major miners including Newmont and Zijin have already invested heavily to develop producing mines on the same geological structures. These are two of the largest mining companies on the planet, and they didn't come here by accident.

That matters for one specific reason. Great gold belts rarely produce just one deposit.

When the majors have already proven a region works, the nearby unexplored ground becomes a very different proposition. You're not betting on whether gold exists here. It does. The question is how much more is waiting to be found.

Miata Metals Corp. (TSXV: MMET | OTCQX: MMETF) controls 215 square kilometers of that ground, Suriname's largest undeveloped gold field. To put that in perspective, that's a land package large enough that a single successful discovery can open up an entire district.

And here's the detail that experienced mining investors find most compelling. Long before any drill rig arrived, local artisanal miners were already pulling gold out of the ground across this property by hand. Not just recently. For generations, across miles of strike.

They stopped not because the gold ran out, but because they couldn't mine that deep.

Miata is drilling below where they stopped. And what the company is finding in that fresh rock below is exactly the kind of result that doesn't stay under the radar for long.

💥 Breaking News: 96 m at 1.41 g/t Au at the Big Berg target, Sela Creek — best intercept to date. Read here.

What the ground is telling them

Stories like this change when the rocks start confirming the thesis. That may be happening right now.

Let's translate that result into plain English. 96 meters is roughly the length of a football field. Imagine drilling straight down through an entire football field's worth of rock and finding gold the whole way through. That's what happened here. And at grades that serious geologists consider genuinely exciting.

This isn't a lucky one-time hit in a narrow crack of rock. It's a wide, continuous gold system sitting close to the surface. Think of it this way: a narrow hit is like finding a single vein of gold in a wall. A wide hit like this is more like finding gold baked into the entire wall. Scale and width are what turn exploration stories into something much bigger.

And Big Berg is just one part of a much larger picture. At the Jons Trend, the largest area of historical gold mining activity on the property, nearly every hole the team has drilled has hit gold. That's with high-grade hits of over 12 grams per ton and wide intervals of consistent mineralization across multiple zones.

The mineralized corridor at Jons Trend now stretches over 750 meters long and 250 meters wide, about eight city blocks in length. And it remains open in every direction. Every time the team has tested the edges, the system has continued beyond them.

In the mining world, that's the signal that separates a lucky anomaly from a genuine district-scale discovery.

Most junior miners run out of money. This one is fully funded.

Many small exploration companies run exciting drill programs and then go quiet, not because the geology stopped working, but because they ran out of money. Raising more takes time and often means issuing new shares at lower prices, diluting the investors who believed in the story early. It's one of the most frustrating patterns in junior mining, and it's derailed more than a few promising stories before they had a chance to develop.

Miata is in a different position. The company has $10 million in cash (as of Dec. 31, 2025) and is fully funded for a 25,000 metre drill program in 2026, more than double the meterage of last year.[7] Two rigs are active, and thanks to Suriname's tropical climate, drilling can continue nearly year-round. That means a steady flow of results over the coming months rather than one seasonal burst followed by months of silence.

No financing scramble. No dilution overhang. Just a fully funded team systematically drilling into one of the most promising gold systems in South America, with more than two dozen additional targets still waiting to be tested.

The right team, in the right country — and significant skin in the game

In junior mining, leadership is everything. Great ground with the wrong team is just a map. And in this sector, it's rarely geology that derails a promising story. It's the learning curves nobody planned for. The regulatory surprises. The operational realities that only reveal themselves once you're actually on the ground.

Miata Metals Corp.'s team has already been on this ground. Not just in South America generally, but specifically in Suriname. They know the geology, the jurisdiction, and the culture. That's not a small thing. That's years of hard-won knowledge that most junior exploration teams are still paying to acquire.

CEO Dr. Jacob (Jaap) Verbaas holds a PhD in geology. Danae Voormeij started work at Rosebel in Suriname and discovered the Tuzon gold deposit in Liberia. Luke Bickerton, the VP Exploration, holds a PhD in Geology, and director Derk Hartman has spent years working in Suriname.

Management and founders own approximately 17% of the company. And in February 2026, Brien Lundin, editor of the Gold Newsletter, now in its 55th year, called Miata a strong buy, comparing the company's exploration potential to prior successful Guiana Shield discoveries.[8]

When insiders own that much and independent analysts are drawing comparisons to previous 10-baggers on the same belt, that's worth paying attention to.

This is still an early-stage exploration story, and that comes with risk

Miata has not yet defined a formal mineral resource. There is no guarantee that continued drilling will deliver results consistent with what has come before. Gold prices can and do fluctuate, sometimes dramatically. Junior mining stocks are volatile by nature and can move sharply in both directions regardless of what the underlying geology is doing. And like most companies at this stage, Miata will likely need additional capital as the program advances, which could dilute existing shareholders over time.

If you are considering any position in a junior mining stock, sizing that position appropriately and doing your own independent research are not optional.

That said, the setup here is about as compelling as these early-stage stories get. A proven geological belt. An experienced in-country team with real skin in the game. A fully funded drill program already turning up results. And a macro environment where institutional demand for gold continues even at today's elevated prices.

Early-stage exploration is where the biggest risks live in this sector. It's also where some of the biggest rewards have historically come from.

The investment case, in plain English

Gold has already made a significant move. Central banks are still buying. And most private investors have barely started. Here's what that means for investors paying attention right now.

A junior explorer in one of the world's most proven gold belts, sitting on Suriname's largest undeveloped gold field, drilling below where artisanal miners pulled gold out by hand for generations. Almost every hole at the Jons Trend target has hit gold, including 96 meters of continuous mineralization at grades that get serious geologists excited. The mineralized corridor keeps growing every time they test the edges.

The company has more than $10 million in the bank, a fully funded 2026 drill program already underway, and a management team that has worked this exact geology in this exact country before, and owns about 17% of the company.

One of the most respected independent voices in gold called it a strong buy earlier this year and compared it to a previous Guiana Shield explorer that delivered more than a 10-bagger for early investors.

Miata Metals Corp. (TSXV: MMET | OTCQX: MMETF) is still early. Still largely undiscovered. And the drill is still turning.

For more information and the latest drill results visit miatametals.com.