Copper

The AI Trade

Mar 28, 2025 3 min read

Two months ago at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, "All I know is, I'm good for my $80 billion" regarding the $500 billion Stargate AI announcement. His comments followed the emergence of DeepSeek's R1 large language model and chatbot, which was supposedly trained at much lower cost than state-of-the-art models built in the US. A February note from

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Dow 60,000: Here We Come

May 22, 2024 3 min read

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 40,000 for the first time on Friday, May 17 (chart). Today it is back down slightly below this level. We hope the title of this QT doesn't turn out to be a jinx, but we are still aiming for Dow 60,000 by 2030 in our Roaring 2020s scenario. Along the way, there could be corrections and even another bear

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

The Economic Week Ahead: May 20 - 24

May 18, 2024 2 min read paid

The week ahead is a light one for economic reports. The focus is mostly on the housing sector, which is showing signs of bottoming if not recovering. Meanwhile, we will continue to focus on Dr. Copper, the metal with a PhD in economics. We watch the price of copper as an indicator of global economic activity, which seems to be improving though the price of oil has yet to confirm

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Copper, Oil & China

Apr 23, 2024 2 min read paid

Is the global economy suddenly taking off? It seems that way given the sudden vertical ascent of several metals prices, particularly those of copper, aluminum, tin, and zinc. On the other hand, the price of a barrel of Brent crude oil has slipped recently, suggesting that its recent advance had more to do with a rising geopolitical risk premium than a resurgence of global growth (chart). Our thesis is that

Ed Yardeni

What Does Dr Copper Say About The Global Economy?

Dec 29, 2023 2 min read

Copper is often described as the shiny metal with a PhD in economics because it provides useful insights into global economic activity. The price of the red metal has rallied in recent days, and could be on the verge of breaking out of its downtrend during 2022 and 2023 that resulted from the bursting of China's property bubble and the decline in US housing starts (chart). A similar

Ed Yardeni

China Scrambles to Avoid Lehman Moment

Jul 20, 2022 1 min read

How do you say "Lehman Moment" in Chinese? The Chinese government is scrambling to avert such a calamity resulting from China's real estate bust. There's a global housing recession underway, led by China. That's why the price of copper has been in a freefall, plunging 33% from $4.94 on March 4, 2022 to $3.31 today (chart). We’ve been tracking

Ed Yardeni

Copper, Gold, Bonds & Stocks

Jul 12, 2022 1 min read

The ratio of the nearby futures prices of copper to gold has been falling lately. The ratio has been a remarkably good indicator for the 10-year US Treasury bond yield.

Ed Yardeni

Three Related Signals of a Global Economic Slowdown

May 26, 2022 1 min read

The widely followed proxy for the expected inflation rate in the 10-year TIPS market dropped in recent days from over 3.0% to 2.6%. Is that just volatility? Or, is it signaling a global economic slowdown since it is highly correlated with the nearby futures price of copper, which has also been weak lately? The expected inflation rate is also highly correlated with the Emerging Markets MSCI stock price

Ed Yardeni

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