Gold, silver, and copper aren’t “memes.” They’re a sovereignty trade.

Most takes treat this like three separate stories: growth drives copper, fear drives gold, “in-between” drives silver. But the more interesting claim is that they’re moving together because the same mechanism is pushing everyone to hoard “stuff you can’t freeze.”

The core question is this: If metals are ripping together, is the driver really one macro signal, or is it stockpiling plus de-dollarization behavior showing up across households, corporates, and central banks?

What’s Actually HappeningWhat’s Actually Happening

This isn’t “gold is money” or “hyperinflation is here.” This is simpler and more concrete: geopolitics plus seizure-risk changed what counts as a “safe” reserve asset. After 2022, when Russia’s sovereign assets were frozen, seizure-risk became legible. Emerging markets started rotating away from assets that can be frozen. Central banks shifted their reserve composition, moving into physical metals at an accelerating pace.

At the same time, it became a dangerous time to be dependent on foreign commodity supply. Everyone—governments, corporations, households—started building buffers. In China, retail hoarding went into overdrive. The silver squeeze became partly a public buying phenomenon, with Shanghai premiums exceeding $5/oz in recent episodes. What’s fueling the gold market isn’t just central banks. It's a broader shift in how people think about what they can actually own when things get uncertain.

Why This Matters for the Supercycle StoryWhy This Matters for the Supercycle Story

If the goal is to understand the rally, focus on hoarding incentives, security, access, export controls, not one tidy macro narrative. The machinery driving this has multiple gears:

Capex supercycles run roughly 12 years. “Putting steel in the ground” is slow. Meanwhile, a volatility trap has emerged: volatility scares capital away, which leads to underinvestment, which creates more volatility. The result is tight physical balances that persist even when prices rise, because the supply response takes years to materialize.

As Jeff Currie explained on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots, for “this is a supercycle” to be accurate, you need evidence of: sustained capex, persistent stockpiling and controls, and tight physical balances. All three are present. (Listen to the full episode here for the detailed breakdown.)

The Real QuestionThe Real Question

What would change this view? Clear, durable supply expansion and a reversal of hoarding and de-dollarization incentives. Until then, the question isn’t whether growth expectations matter. It's whether they matter more than seizure-risk plus supply-access risk.

If gold, silver, and copper are all up together, that’s the signal. The trade isn’t about fear or greed. It’s about sovereignty.