Uranium ETFs Sell Off Even as Long-Term Price Hits 18-Year High
Physical uranium and mining equities are diverging, with Sprott calling the disconnect a buying opportunity.
The Global X Uranium ETF fell 3.77% on Wednesday (2026-07-29), extending a stretch of underperformance that has increasingly puzzled the bull camp. The selloff came as ICE Brent crude front-month held above $90 a barrel and the ICE Endex TTF front-month jumped nearly 5%, but uranium equities have been moving against the commodity itself for weeks.4[live_prices]
Sprott Asset Management called the divergence a buying opportunity in a note published on Sunday (2026-07-20). The long-term uranium price hit $94 per lb at the end of June, its highest in 18 years, while the spot price gained 4.3% in the first half of 2026. Uranium mining equities fell 3.9% over the same period and junior uranium miners lost 7.4%. In June alone, the two equity indexes dropped 14.4% and 17.5%, respectively.4
"A rising long-term price shows that the market remains tight, even if equity markets don't reflect it," Jacob White, ETF product manager at Sprott Asset Management, wrote in that note. Sprott's Physical Uranium Trust holds 81.4 million lb of uranium oxide with a net asset value of about $7.1 billion.4
The demand case has not weakened. The Department of Energy projects data centers will account for up to 12% of US electrical demand by 2028, up from about 5% of total generation now — a step change on a grid that has barely grown since 2000. AI training clusters require around-the-clock firm power, and wind and solar cannot fill that gap alone.1,2
Thirty-eight countries have pledged to triple nuclear capacity by 2050. Meta has signed agreements for up to 6.6 gigawatts of nuclear. The US Department of Energy in June announced $17.5 billion in conditional loans to fund long-lead items for as many as 10 new reactors. Microsoft signed a 20-year, 835 MW power purchase agreement with Constellation Energy in September 2024 to restart Three Mile Island Unit 1, a $1.6 billion project targeting a 2027 start.1,34
But the equity side tells a different story. NUKZ, the Range Nuclear Renaissance Index ETF targeting reactor operators and SMR developers, posted a 14% year-to-date gain and a 42% one-year return as of early June (2026-06-01), according to fund data cited by 247wallst.com. That trails URA over the year but outpaces NLR, the VanEck Uranium and Nuclear ETF — for a fund weighted toward infrastructure rather than fuel, a result largely in line with expectations.2
Uranium miners had a strong 2025. The pullback in the first half of 2026 after that run is consistent with profit-taking rather than a fundamental shift. The EIA flagged that residential electricity prices are expected to increase by 5% in 2026, a dynamic that regulators have used to favor firm, dispatchable generation over intermittent builds.1,2 A 1 GW reactor runs at capacity factors above 90% on a fraction of the land of an equivalent solar farm.1
The worry is that the equity selloff becomes self-reinforcing. If the 14.4% June decline in senior mining stocks scares capital away from project financing, the supply crunch signalled by the long-term price may take longer to resolve. New mines take years to reach production, and the physical market is already pricing scarcity at $94 per lb.4
URA is up 62% over the past 12 months on an upstream fuel constraint story, per data cited in a June (2026-06-01) 247wallst.com analysis — yet the fund has been unable to hold gains during the broader equity drawdown of recent weeks. VIX was trading at 20.66 on Wednesday (2026-07-29), up more than 13% on the session, suggesting the selloff in uranium equities reflects broader risk-off positioning as much as any sector-specific reassessment.2[live_prices]
For now, the physical uranium price is signalling scarcity while equity markets price in doubt. The next concrete data point is the spot uranium price in August, and whether it holds the gains posted in the first half of 2026 against a backdrop of continued equity outflows from mining funds.4