Freeport-McMoRan is an excellent way to capture a structural commodities bull market. Goldman Sachs, in its first Buy rating, calls it the best exposure to a structural copper shortage, plus gold. Per Goldman, electrification lifts copper demand 2.1% a year to 2030 while falling ore grades raise costs. Grasberg's gold by-product and US leaching at about $1 a pound, aiming for 800 million pounds a year by 2030, could lift EBITDA margins above 50% and fund $19 billion-plus of free cash flow. x.com 

Copper hit its highest recorded price in August, and supply cannot answer quickly because a new mine takes twelve to fifteen years, if drilling, permits and governments cooperate. The investment case is the gap between demand rising from about 28M tonnes today to 42M by 2040 and supply stalling around 2030. Two of the four demand engines, the AI build-out and electrification, also drive the tech trade, so bulls on data centres cannot be indifferent to the metal that wires them. x.com  x.com 

Copper will follow the AI trade lower, making it a good catch-up short. x.com 

Record copper import premiums signal imminent supply shortages. @robert_ivanhoe reports that the Yangshan premium broke its record, indicating scarce near-term supply in China. An Ivan Bebek chart using International Copper Study Group data shows preliminary global mine output down 1% year on year in January-July 2026, after eight straight years of growth. x.com  x.com 

Copper's structural deficit does not yet look priced in, with the copper/gold ratio still near multi-decade lows. JPMorgan forecasts a 330kt copper deficit in 2026, AI data centers may need over 1 million tons a year by 2030, EVs use about 4x the copper of gas cars, new mines take 15-20 years to build, and ore grades have declined for decades. x.com 

Copper's rally is driven mainly by financial players rather than physical demand, making it unsustainable in the short term. Inventories keep rising against the shortage narrative, commercial hedgers are near multi-year shorts while CTAs hold multi-year highs, and China's credit impulse is deteriorating. The cycle and seasonality point to a peak in late August or early September, and a weekly rising wedge signals exhaustion. The long-term picture stays bullish after a reset into Q4 or Q1 2027. … Show more

Copper's long-forecast supply shortfall is now arriving. After a 2020 surplus that nobody cared about, 2026 brings the first deficit since 2009 with copper at $14,500, and the market is projected to be 13 million tonnes short by 2040. x.com 

Hard assets and commodities such as copper are where capital is rotating in 2026, as money drains from consumer and services sectors. Inflation is back, with CPI at 3.8%, energy costs up 18% and natural gas up 28%, which makes cash and paper assets losers and hard assets the viable havens. Institutions are 97% invested per the NAAIM index, so flows between sectors matter more than new money, and negative real wages are crushing traditional consumer names. x.com 

Copper is not a bullish play, as it is arguably used more as a transitional tool over the next two years. That holds even though NVIDIA's CEO said they will need more copper, alongside optics and CPO. x.com 

Copper miners have a long-term supply case because major copper discoveries have dried up. The world will face a very large copper imbalance as the years pass. x.com