Mining Equities Across the Business Cycle: Recession Signals and Sector Divergence

The 2022 to 2024 yield-curve inversion, the longest since 1980, produced no recession on the historical schedule, forcing a reassessment of indicator lead times in mining-equity allocation. This report sets out the empirical record of how four signals, the yield curve, manufacturing PMI, high-yield credit spreads, and the unemployment trigger, have led or coincided with peak-to-trough drawdowns in gold equities, base-metal miners, and diversifieds across five cycles since 2000. The structural divergence between precious-metal miners, which gained in most post-1971 contractions, and cyclical base-metal producers, which sold off with global PMI, is documented and quantified. A final section places the late-2025 position, with manufacturing barely in contraction, credit spreads still benign, and gold equities sharply higher on the year, against the historical templates.