Goldman’s assessment is very straightforward: the world is facing a shortage of copper and silver.
Seeing the chart makes it more intuitive. This is global copper inventory: dark blue is the United States, light blue is everything outside the United States. In just a little over two months, that U.S. line was stacked from 500 thousand tonnes up to nearly 1,500 thousand tonnes—more than doubled. The portion outside the U.S. is also rising, but the slope is much gentler.
The total is going up. From afar it looks like there’s no shortage, but the bulk is being piled up inside the U.S., while the portion that can actually be called on overseas doesn’t look as roomy on the numbers—this is essentially what Goldman means when it says supply is tighter than inventory figures suggest.
Copper and silver are materials that can’t be avoided by power grids, AI data centers, and solar PV. Moving inventory from one place to another doesn’t mean production increases. In the short term it can suppress prices; in the long run, you still have to look at how much the mines produce each year.
Seeing the chart makes it more intuitive. This is global copper inventory: dark blue is the United States, light blue is everything outside the United States. In just a little over two months, that U.S. line was stacked from 500 thousand tonnes up to nearly 1,500 thousand tonnes—more than doubled. The portion outside the U.S. is also rising, but the slope is much gentler.
The total is going up. From afar it looks like there’s no shortage, but the bulk is being piled up inside the U.S., while the portion that can actually be called on overseas doesn’t look as roomy on the numbers—this is essentially what Goldman means when it says supply is tighter than inventory figures suggest.
Copper and silver are materials that can’t be avoided by power grids, AI data centers, and solar PV. Moving inventory from one place to another doesn’t mean production increases. In the short term it can suppress prices; in the long run, you still have to look at how much the mines produce each year.