After the equal of $68 billion price of copper tons exchanged palms in 24 hours, the brown metallic is up 35% to date in 2024 with a lot of the beneficial properties in the previous few weeks.
Jeff Currie, ex Goldman Sachs and extra just lately Chief Technique Officer of Vitality Pathways at asset supervisor Carlyle, informed Bloomberg in an interview headlined Copper is the New Oil (not it’s not) that copper “is the best conviction commerce I’ve ever seen”.
Goldman had been calling copper at right this moment’s costs for no less than three years, however Currie’s studying of the power pathways now sees copper going to $15,000 ($6.80 a pound).
MINING.COM has been banging the identical copper drum primarily based on the metallic’s place on the nexus of the inexperienced power transition however Currie provides two different tailwinds to inexperienced capex demand to get copper to $15k:
- Inexperienced power transition
- AI knowledge facilities
- Navy demand.
Add the lengthy lead occasions to construct new mines (simply ask Rio Tinto), tight inventories and Currie says the 2021 name is lastly paying off:
“You possibly can’t provide you with a greater story [..] I’m assured that this time it’s liftoff.”
Currie additionally factors out that solely at $15,000 would copper match its inflation adjusted all-time peak reached in 1968 which got here on the again of a housing increase within the US.
Copper peaked at $0.72 in February of 1968 and because it occurs, throughout that tumultuous yr McDonald’s first launched the Large Mac to America.
The Large Mac, everybody’s favorite deflator, was priced at $0.49 in 1968. At the moment the Large Mac is a cool $5.99.
Says Currie: “For those who return to the 2000s and I used to be as bullish on oil then as I’m copper right this moment. You realize oil ended up going up from $20 to $140 seven occasions. The upside on copper right here could be very vital.”
Unsure precisely the place on the 20-140 spectrum copper is buying and selling right this moment but when that is the argument that copper is the brand new oil, MINING.COM will take it.