Copper just hit a new all-time high.
LME Copper closed at $13,943 a ton on Monday, an all-time record close, up 2.7% in a single session.
The metal is up 12% YTD and 40% over the last twelve months…
But you won’t hear much about it in the financial press.
They’re only obsessed with one side of the AI trade: the hyperscalers spending hundreds of billions on data centers, the chip makers selling them GPUs, the fund managers debating whether Nvidia is overvalued at $4 trillion.
They’re missing the more important story beneath it all.
None of it works without copper.
A single hyperscale data center can require up to 50,000 tons of copper, according to the Copper Development Association.
The industry averages roughly 27 to 33 tons of copper per megawatt of AI data center capacity, more than double what traditional data centers consume.
BHP has also cited case studies on 80-megawatt deployments using more than 2,000 tons before grid interconnection is even factored in.
Multiply that across the hundreds of billions Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta are spending on AI infrastructure, and you get a demand signal the copper market has never seen.
Goldman Sachs is projecting a 165% increase in data center power demand by 2030. S&P Global forecasts that data center copper demand will grow from 1.1 million metric tons in 2025 to 2.5 million by 2040.
And the supply side simply can’t respond.
Ore grades at legacy mines have fallen roughly 40% since 1991, new mine development takes more than a decade, and the International Energy Agency has flagged that existing and planned mines can only meet about 70% of projected 2035 demand.
This is what is driving copper to record highs. It’s not speculation… it’s real, physical demand against constrained supply.
Here’s the part the data center developers don’t care about.
According to Wood Mackenzie, copper accounts for less than 0.5% of total project costs for a hyperscale facility, which means demand is price-inelastic.
They’ll pay whatever the market sets because the project economics work regardless, and the metal is the bottleneck, not the budget line item.
That’s the trade we’ve been on.
Last October, after the mud rush at the Grasberg mine in Indonesia, Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) traded down to $39, fueling a full-on Wall Street panic.
We sold the FCX January 2027 $23 puts for $1.10 to $1.20, betting we would either get the stock at a 43% discount or collect the premium clean.
We closed the trade in January for 50% return on capital, a full year early.
The stock is now $63.86.
FCX joined the $100 billion mining market cap club last week, only the seventh miner in history to do so.
Up over 20% year to date, even with Indonesia disrupted.
Now, Grasberg is coming back.
The Indonesian government just extended FCX’s long-term operating rights beyond 2041, and production ramps to 65% capacity in the second half of this year and toward full capacity by the end of 2027.
As that comes online, FCX is positioned to deliver into the tightest copper market in modern history.
YOUR ACTION PLAN
The AI buildout isn’t something that’s happening down the road. The capex is signed, the data centers are breaking ground, and the grid is being upgraded. Every one of those projects run on copper, and there’s not enough of it.
FCX is the cleanest way to own that trade on US exchanges.
We’ve been trading it over the last year in the War Room. Bryan played it for an overnight trade and had success with it.
And while all the attention remains on one side of the AI trade, we’ll continue to focus on the picks and shovels in The War Room.
See you in there tomorrow.