Why Copper is in a Unique Position Right Now

Yeah, copper is a very interesting one because you have traditional uses for copper. It's traditionally been pretty correlated with the market cycle. It's been called doctor copper because it can kind of indicate what's going on with the business cycle.

But now not only do you have more copper needed for traditional things like infrastructure manufacturing and those kinds of things around the world, but you have new demands from AI. Even without AI, data center buildouts and all of these things and electrification, as you mentioned, there's this growing demand for copper.

Meanwhile, there has not been enough copper supply brought into the market over the last 10 to 15 years, and it takes a long time to bring new supply into the market. So a couple weeks ago, there was a big correction in US copper prices simply because of a change in tariff policy that the Trump administration announced.

People had expected US prices to rise quite a bit, or there was a premium relative to overseas prices of copper. The Trump administration decided not to put that premium on. Prices dropped by about 25% but backed up a little bit from there. But the key thing is that that's really potentially created a good entry point.

The demand story for copper and the pending supply shortage has not changed, so I think the fundamentals are still in place. A downturn in the global economy can impact copper and lower prices for a bit, but we think long term over the next few years and even beyond, copper demand is going to exceed supply, and it may do so by a wide margin.