What’s next for the world’s ‘big three’ metals?

Gold is in its most spectacular bull run since 1976-1980, when prices rocketed from $91 to over $800 an ounce.

The current cycle found its floor near $1,800 in late 2022, as the Powell Fed’s rate-hike campaign peaked and Washington froze $300 billion in Russian reserves in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

“Dr Auric” now trades at just over $4,000 an ounce – a perfect vindication of my previously published $4,000 year-end strategic target.

The weaponisation of the US dollar, the Swift banking system and access to New York’s money markets has unleashed one of the biggest reserve-asset shifts in central banking history.

Unsurprisingly, central bank buying – led by the People’s Bank of China – fuelled a 24 percent jump in gold in 2024, as well as an extraordinary 49 percent surge in 2025.

The yellow metal has once again claimed the gold medal in the metal-market Olympiad, while the dethroned King Dollar has stumbled, dropping 10 percent on the trade-weighted index (DXY) this year.

Currency debasement has sparked monetary earthquakes since Roman times, and the Age of Trump will be no exception.

Silver is for the steely

Spot prices for silver have surged to $48 an ounce – up a stellar 64 percent in 2025. But with roughly double gold’s volatility, the white metal remains a treacherous ride. It’s not suited to nervous nellies who lack abdominal fortitude.

History shows silver has traded at 2-3 percent of gold’s price in 21 of the past 50 years. Today, it sits at just 1.22 percent of gold’s price – clearly undervalued on a relative basis.

At the same time, global mine output remains in deficit. Fresh demand from missile systems, EVs and clean-energy technologies is set to tighten supplies further.

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Silver lease rates in London and Shanghai, normally in the 1-2 percent range, have spiked to 6 percent – a clear sign of hoarding.

Meanwhile, the world’s largest institutional investors are boosting their exposure to paper silver through futures and options markets across the globe.

Like gold, silver is in a secular bull market, though its path will be more parabolic and volatile. The next target is the $54 highs set up by the Nelson Bunker Hunt corner attempt in 1980 and the Arab Spring/European debt-crisis spike in 2011.

Mixed fortunes for the red metal

Copper will be to the 2020s what crude oil was to the 1970s, as the human race transitions from the hydrocarbon age to the AI age.

The red metal opened 2025 at $8,700 per metric tonne on the London Metal Exchange (LME) and now trades at $10,608, a 16 percent year-to-date gain.

Unlike gold and silver, copper is not yet in a structural bull market. Known in trading circles as “Dr Copper” for its uncanny ability to diagnose the health of the global economy, half of its demand is tied to the industrial cycle in the US and China – both now in a synchronised slowdown.

In China, deflation haunts the property market, resulting in anaemic demand for copper cables.

President Xi Jinping has ordered China’s 138 EV makers to consolidate – an exercise in Maoist-capitalist restructuring that threatens to slash copper demand.

A deflationary big chill haunts the world commodity markets. It confirms my conviction that copper may fall to $7,000 a tonne on the LME within the next 12 months.

Still, the red metal may well triple to $30,000 in the next decade as the AI revolution reinvents the global power grid, thereby increasing demand for the world’s fastest conductor of electricity.

Meanwhile, Brent has plunged from $130 a barrel following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to $65 now. The global supply glut suggests Brent will achieve Goldman Sachs’ early 50s target next year.

Natural gas has fallen from $10 to $3.40. Wheat, corn, nickel, tin and aluminium prices are all under pressure.

The only reason Dr Copper has shown resilience amid an emerging US consumer credit crunch and China’s trade war and shadow banking crisis is that metals typically spike on sudden supply shocks.

In the near term the outlook remains bearish, but from 2027 onward copper’s demand curve is set to soar as it displaces crude oil as the world’s most critical strategic commodity.