Should You Buy MP Materials While It's Below $60?

If you had bought shares of MP Materials (NYSE: MP) past May, erstwhile the rare-earth miner was trading astir $20 a pop, you would person been joyously rewarded successful aboriginal July. On July 15, MP announced 2 large partnerships, 1 with the Department of Defense, the different with Apple. Shares jumped to astir $60 connected the heels of that news.

Fast-forward to May 2026, and MP Materials, though posting gross beats and maintaining a affirmative outlook, is trading astatine fundamentally the aforesaid terms arsenic that mid-July high.

What gives? Is $60 a stock MP's ceiling, oregon are investors overlooking a diamond successful the rough?

The communicative astir MP Materials' strategical value mightiness beryllium shifting

MP Materials presently operates the lone progressive rare-earth excavation successful the U.S. -- the Mountain Pass excavation successful California. It's besides the lone institution successful a presumption contiguous to proviso U.S. companies with rare-earth magnets grown connected American soil.

These "magic" magnets powerfulness everything from electrical vehicles to aesculapian imaging devices, laptops, and missiles. They're besides mostly imported from China, which has made the U.S. uncomfortably babelike connected a federation it considers an economical adversary.

That past portion has been important to MP's banal performance. When the Department of Defense invested $400 cardinal successful MP past July, the banal gained 50% successful a azygous time (it would extremity up gaining 100% implicit the adjacent week). Likewise, MP had its strongest show ever successful October 2025, astir erstwhile China imposed strict restrictions connected rare-earth metals.

So agelong arsenic MP's concern is wrapped up successful nationalist information issues, the institution seems insulated from the emblematic boom-and-bust cycles of mining stocks. But that, of course, is besides the risk of a policy-driven stock. If relations betwixt the 2 nations change, as, indeed, they present look to beryllium doing, MP banal could easy suffer immoderate luster.

Take, for instance, President Donald Trump's caller travel to China. From this gathering of the world's astir almighty economies, it appears that Beijing whitethorn unbend immoderate of its restrictions astir exporting neodymium -- 1 of the cardinal ingredients to rare-earth magnets, arsenic good arsenic 1 of MP's halfway outputs.

The crushed for this isn't hard to fathom: Even erstwhile MP has finished its 2nd magnet mill and is operating astatine afloat capacity, there's nary warrant it tin proviso all of the U.S.'s rare-earth needs. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) precocious reported, for instance, that 8,900 tons of rare-earth compounds were produced astatine Mountain Pass excavation successful 2025 -- its top measurement successful decades. However, that accumulation lone accounted for astir one-third of the U.S. consumption, with a ample portion of the remaining information coming from (guess who) China.