Lobo Tiggre: Copper is My Highest-Confidence 2026 Trade, Uranium is Runner-Up

I'm Charlotte McLeod with InvestingNews.com and here today with me is Bobo Tigray, CEO of IndependentSpeculator.com. Thank you so much for being here. Great to have you. Always a pleasure, Charlotte. Very good to be catching up with you in person in New Orleans. And we were saying just before we turn the camera on, it's usually your tradition here to announce your highest confidence trade for the next year when we're at this conference. So definitely, I want to get into that, and I missed your presentation, so I don't know what it is yet. But I thought before we do that, we could check in on copper, which was the pick for last year, and ask you how you'd characterize copper's performance in 2025. How do you feel about that choice? Well, we're kind of combining the questions here because I'm actually going to have a repeat and it's copper again for 2026. But to answer the second part first, then, copper's actually had a good year. So for people who are saying, oh, Bobo, you blew it, gold and platinum have blown copper out of the water, well, the prediction is not the metal or commodity that will rise the most in price because higher gains come with higher risk. It's the highest confidence trade. So copper's only up 25% this year. What a slouch compared to all the others. So I can't say I was wrong either. I had a high confidence that copper would go higher this year. On the other hand, maybe I can say I was wrong because the reasons for copper to go higher are still sort of in the wings. A lot of what drove copper nuts earlier this year to all-time highs was Trump shock. On the way up and on the way down, we had this massive rise because people thought, oh, copper tariffs. And then it's like, no, no, just on finished products, never mind the stuff the miners produce, which was actually a very good thing for the economy because we just, in the United States, don't produce enough copper. We import about 50% and slapping tariffs on that would have a very strong effect and not one that you could immediately pivot to do anything about. So what Trump giveth, Trump taketh away. It's kind of gone back where it was, but that is an upwards trend anyway. So the good news is that copper as an inflation hedge just being a real commodity that governments can't print, copper being Dr. Copper, an essential ingredient like iron and steel and so on, all of that is there. On top of that, we have still the electrification. And I know a lot of our hard money advocates hate electric cars. And I'm with you. I don't like having regulations and quotas stuff anything down my throat. But the world is going electric. And by the way, hybrids use a lot more copper as well. So the change in the automotive industry still has us there as a tailwind on top of just the basic growth in population and industry. And then there's the AI thing, which is also a lot of people like, oh, the AI hype, it's overblown, it's all going to crash and burn and copper is going to go down with it. Well, if the only reason to be excited about copper was AI, then that would be a legitimate concern. But that's another tailwind on top of this other thing. And by the way, even if the AI stocks are hyped up and overblown, the data centers are a building, right? The raw materials going into this race, and I do think of this as an arms race. I mean, Putin has even said, whoever gets to AGI first wins World War III. And I don't think the Chinese see it any differently. And certainly the current administration in the United States seems pretty hell bent on not coming in last. So whether you agree with any of these policies or not, or whether you think the world is mad or not, whether the AI hype is overdone or not, doesn't even matter. The fact is that companies, countries are pushing in this direction and the requirements of critical minerals, of which copper is one, are huge. So I may not be able to tell the future very well. I don't know. You know, we can talk about gold, I'm sure, in a minute. I don't know if it's going up or going down from here. But I am sure that the global arms race that is AI, on top of just the general economic fundamental demand for copper, paints an extremely bullish scenario going forward. And the only reason why I haven't really been buying hand over fist this year is because I still think we're in for more economic weakness in the near term. The transition that Trump is trying to engineer in the United States affects the US and the whole world. I just can't convince myself that that's going to be painless and we're just going to go from happy, happy to joy, joy. And maybe I'm wrong. But I'm hoping to have a better buying opportunity going into that. I've been hoping all year and haven't had it yet. But maybe I will by the end of this year. And if not, I'm just going to buy anyway, because my confidence in this thesis is that high. It's just the only thing that comes close is actually uranium. The differences in the uranium space, it can actually melt down on us if there's a nuclear accident. And that is not possible in the copper space. There's nothing like that. So top pick for 2026 is copper. Similar reasons to 2025. The copper price has been kicked around up and down by what I think of as sort of extraneous issues. But the fundamentals, I mean, the demand scenario just looks phenomenal. And the supply has been really constrained. It's been exceptionally constrained this year because we had four major copper mining accidents. Some including fatalities, unfortunately. But that's not something you can track or put a trend line or something. These things happen. So my thesis is not copper because there's going to be more mining accidents, but just copper because we need more. And finding, permitting, and building these mega deposits that are needed takes a lot of time. It's not happening fast enough. Sorry, long-winded answer, but we got two questions in one in there. Well, and that's what I get for not going to the presentation. I didn't know they were going to be together. And you also addressed a follow-up that I had, which I think I remember from back in the summer, you were waiting for the right entry point for copper. And it sounds like still waiting, and it would be if and when we get that economic pullback. Yeah. I mean, we did have some fluctuations. So I did buy one copper stock because it just got really cheap, and I couldn't resist. And it hasn't gone vertical since then, but I'm comfortably in the black on that. One of the things about me is I'm not a macroanalyst. I follow the stories, and I look where the world is going. But I'm really very focused on what is actually happening right now. Not in a technical analyst kind of way, but what trend is actually manifesting itself. Because we hear these great stories about AI or whatever, and when does that translate into prices moving in my investment time frame is what I need to know. And as our friend Rick Rule likes to say, never confuse the inevitable with the imminent. And I can't tell. So I'm like, forget inevitable and imminent. I want to know what's happening now. And what's happening now in copper is sort of waffling. We had these moves up, moves down. It's doing okay, but that could easily go away if the kind of weakness that even the Fed admits and is cutting rates in the face of higher inflation, that's really telling you something. If they're cutting rates in the face of higher inflation, that means they're worried about the economy. And if it's called Dr. Copper because it has a PhD in economics, that makes me hesitant to go charging in before then. What I can say, though, is on the bright side, the hockey stakes we've seen in gold and silver this year have done wonders for my portfolio. And I have taken some profits. And so I now have probably more cash to put into play than I've ever had sitting on the sidelines now and waiting for this copper buying opportunity. So either I buy the dip or I just buy anyway, either way, I've got a ton of cash to put into this bet. And I'm really looking forward to it because it's rare for me to feel this high level of confidence. And unlike uranium, I'm not worried about it blowing up on me. I wonder, at what point would you be ready to throw in the towel and say, all right, this economic pullback or downturn is not happening, now I need to get in? I wish I could say, here's the number, right? If this happens, then we'll know. There isn't any one single number. But it's interesting how the tariffs and the upset, objectively, we have to look at it and look at the markets, look at the economy and say, it really hasn't been that bad. If we were in the bear camp and we thought Trump shock was really going to upset the apple cart, we should have seen a much higher spike in unemployment by now. We should have seen more of the tariff costs passed on to consumers. And a lot of people think, well, but they can't hold off forever. And there's talk of the K-shaped economy, yeah, but the people on the lower part of the K, they're really suffering. And all of that may be true. But the fact is that the economy hasn't really tanked. Maybe one way of looking at this is Lynn Alden's Nothing Stops This Train riff, or my simple Humble Wolf way of looking at it, the money helicopters are still in the air. So yeah, all this negative stuff is happening, and yet we have another record-earning season. It's not just the AI built. There is more breadth in the market now. The Dow is doing okay, not just the S&P 500 or the Magnificent Seven. So there are actual signs that the real economy is, A, it's held up better than I thought. And so here, it may just be a matter of time. If in the next month or two, nothing blows up, I'd probably be, you know what, I don't know where the bottom is, but I'm confident enough in a thesis I'm just going to start buying anyway. And if it fluctuates, I'll average down. Okay, I think that's a fair answer and gives us an idea of where your head is at there. Just a little bit more on what's going on with the economy, because we recently had the Fed's latest meeting, they took rates down, and you mentioned this is telling us something about what the Fed thinks. And from what I've been hearing definitely around this conference, it seems like as we get into next year, when we have a new Fed chair, people are expecting rates to really come down. So I'm curious if you would share anything else and what you see coming from the Fed and perhaps this new eventual Fed chair that will probably be of Trump's preference. Right. I mean, it kind of looks like a perfect storm for stagflation, because if they're worried about the economy, you know, focused on the labor market, and remember, people keep telling you, oh, we've got the historic lows in unemployment, haven't seen employment this low for 50 years. That's comparing apples to oranges. The U3 unemployment rate that they're saying now is at historic lows is not the way it was 50 years ago. And you know, when they changed everything in the 80s, that the number that's closer to that old number that we used to call the unemployment rate is what we currently call the U6, which gets, you know, hush, hush, barely mentioned. And that's running like double or more the U3. So it's not true that the unemployment numbers are so low. And I think the powers that be, they know this, even if they won't admit it. Conspiracy theory on my part. I have my tinfoil hat around here somewhere. But I mean, those numbers are there, and any professional economist has to know the difference between these numbers and why they happen. So there are signs of weakness. Just this last week, it's more anecdotal, but we've seen major layoffs, you know, not hundreds, but not even just a few thousand, but like tens of thousands, you know, major layoffs. And interestingly, some of it blue collar, which speaks to the lower rung of the K-shaped economy, and some of it white collar, AI supposedly replacing all these people. That's a big deal. So if you've got that, and you've got, okay, another word they're not using is transitory, but they're basically saying it's transitory, like we're going to pay more attention to labor now, even though inflation is 50% above target and labor is near, you know, record low unemployment, but we're somehow, we're more worried about labor right now than inflation. Yeah. I really think they're speaking out of both sides of their mouths when they say things like that. But anyway, transitory or not, right now, inflation is going up. PCE, CPI, core of the set, or any number you want for almost half a year now, these numbers have been going up. So the Fed is cutting while inflation is rising and it's never got down to its target. And there's signs of weakness in the labor market and in the broader economy, K-shaped or not. So to me, that looks like stagflation, implications, you know, history doesn't always repeat, but if it rhymes at all, and this is a funny thing to say with gold still holding over 4,000 bucks analysis, we talk and silver still, you know, below 50, but near that very nice, a nice historic number, right? So with our monetary metals at these levels to say that the outlook is stagflationary, which last time we had a serious bout of stagflation sent gold and silver scream in higher, you know, if I was a cheerleader promoter type, but that would be all I would talk about. So there is a scenario here though, where we go much higher and I don't deny that despite my Darth Vader reputation, but there's also a scenario that the market has sniffed this out in advance and the current highs are actually that scenario priced in advance and the next big move is down. So I'm sorry. There we go. I'm raining London parade, folks. I just, I couldn't talk about the rosy scenario without balancing it with the not-so-rosy scenario, which if I may, brings me to the bottom line of my presentation today, which was not sell, get out. It's not Lobo turned bearish, put away the rotten tomatoes. But it was my mantra for right now, nobody goes broke taking profits and taking profits does not mean selling everything and running for the hills. But at the very least, it means locking in, you know, getting your money back off the table so that you can't lose. Or in my case, I've actually been locking in gains so that whatever happens, not only can I not lose, I cannot not have a big win because I locked that in and things have gone up so much that I can do that and still have more money on the table than I started with. So I'm still, if, you know, if the next big move is up, I have more money on the table than I started with. I benefit. If the next big move is down, I haven't just gotten my money back. I've gotten more than my money back. So I still have a big win, even if it goes down. So it's, it's win-win either way. It's sort of win-win more depending on how things go. Maybe you can talk a little bit more about, I'm trying to ask this to anyone who I hear has taken profits during that big run-up in the gold and silver prices a couple of weeks ago. Maybe you can share more details on what you did there and how it looked for you, because I know that's probably the hardest part for people is to know when to sell. Yeah. Oil goes negative in 2020. That was a pretty obvious time to buy low. But when do you sell high? How do you know? I don't claim to be smart enough to time markets or know when things roll over at the top. So I have a, my own method and you don't have to do what I do, but I do think everybody should have a strategy for how you're going to do this. And I call mine the upside maximizer. And I use something like a trailing stop, but it's not a stop loss. It's something that ratchets up as long as something keeps going up. And then when it rolls over, I get triggered, I get an alert, and then I take my profits. And that could be take a little bit, like just my initial investment. It could be take a lot, like take it all, leave only in the initial investment or somewhere in between. That's, that's a separate question. The trigger just tells me, Hey, something has changed for this stock. So do something about it. Now here's, here's the answer to your question. So I have these for all my big wins and I've got a lot of big wins right now. Right. So they, if one rolls over, there's something with that company, right? But if they all start rolling over, there's something with the market that, so, so my answer is I don't have a method for timing market tops, but enough of these upside maximizers have rolled over. I've been triggered and I have executed, even though I'm optimistic, I am bullish on gold and silver. Don't get me wrong guys. But I follow my discipline. And, and as Rick roll likes to say, I'm now well beyond the point of no concern. And it's not because I knew the goal was going to stop at 4,400 or my secret sources in the CIA said they were going to attack silver at 54 above my pay grade. It's just the math said, Hey, the stock has rolled over. It's time to take some profits. I did. And now I have a huge whack of cash that, you know, if the next big move in gold and silver is down, I'll be able to buy back in when the stocks go, you know, go crater and I'll be able to buy cheap again. If not, I'll follow my, my plan and I'll buy more in copper and happily. So I like to say, you have an expression in the woods loaded for bear means you've got the big gun in case a bear shows up in this market, I'm loaded for bull or bear. I've got a big gun of cash ready to go either way. And you mentioned, so some of that will hopefully go toward the copper plays at some point gold and silver go down, maybe back into those, anything else that's on your shopping list right now? Well, I mentioned uranium and all the reasons for that. And it's, it's like copper in a way, you know, it's, it's necessary anyway, baseload power 24, seven, three 65, the sort of thing you need for airports and hospitals and whatnot. The demand is growing around the world and it was before the electric car thing. It was before the AI craze, right? But those add tailwinds to it. So in many ways, copper and uranium are my two favorite energy minerals. But the difference is that copper can't have a nuclear accident. So I like them both. There's a higher risk associated with uranium and uranium is back over 80 bucks a pound, which seems to be an equilibrium type price for, for clearing the market and incentive price. I do think it will go higher. That is my base case expectation, but it's been kind of stubborn around that range. And I'm not the only one who sees this, you know, the AI has kind of bled into uranium and nuclear, anything nuclear right now is seen as sort of the picks and shovels for AI. And if, so if you don't want to chase NVIDIA way up to the stratosphere, well, you know, these uranium stocks are another way to play that. And so what I'm saying is I like metal, but the stocks, at least the better ones are not really on sale. If you find a uranium stock that's on sale right now, there's probably something wrong with that company because the rising tide has lifted almost all ships. So I like it a lot. It just doesn't, I just don't have quite the same level of confidence. Nuclear accident aside, I know that nuclear accidents are rare. In fact, Three Mile Island was really a nothing burger. Fukushima, it was the tsunami that killed people. And yes, there was a serious nuclear issue, but the engineers did what they were supposed to do and they prevented it. So really we're left with Chernobyl. So in the entire history of nuclear civilian power, energy, there's really been one serious failure, which was arguably more about Soviet stupidity than nuclear engineering. So that's actually a pretty safe track record. And you know, people hyperventilate about this, but you know what, if a big dam goes upstream from population, that can have a bigger effect than a nuclear blast, like a nuclear weapon blast, nevermind a little bit of radiation leaking from a reactor. So I'm not really worried about nuclear energy, but it is the sort of tail risk that if something bad happens, these stocks will generate immediate capital gains, losses of a large scale faster than you can hit the bit. So that's why I always say this. It's just one of those things where I'm not worried about it. I don't sleep over it, but it can happen and it would be irresponsible for me to be the cheerleader and not mention the risk. Yeah, I think it's definitely fair to bring up. And maybe just one more small note on uranium. Any thoughts on the recent-ish deal that we saw between the U.S. government and Cameco Brookfield on the nuclear reactors? Because it seems like, I know you said the market is, you know, kind of like this, but it does seem like we continue to get those more favorable factors continuing to build. Yeah, you know, that's, well, there's a couple of things on that. One is it's good for the whole sector. And you saw a response, actually, other stocks around that, just like, oh, it just, it was a, let's buy everything in this space kind of day when that news came out. So that's good for the whole space. It also accentuates something that I think we have talked about before, and as we don't really have, you know, a U.S. versus non-U.S. uranium price, but the spot price is not really the real market anyway. It's the long-term contracts between, you know, suppliers and customers, you know, miners and customers. And I do think that we could see a significant divergence there and a premium paid in the U.S. or close to U.S., you know, the 51st state, maybe, right? And maybe Australia becomes the 52nd state, I don't know. But I do think that the administration is aware that it needs friends, too, not just U.S. production, but either way, I mean, I think that this can produce an extra tailwind for companies with projects in these areas where they could benefit from this extra upside. So I like it in all kinds of ways. And yes, you're right. It seems like it's gone from every month there was some big deal that was good for uranium to every week to almost daily now. There's some announcement or another that's just really bullish. And on the supply side, it's still not happening. The two biggest and best in the whole space have officially moved their goalposts, did not ramp up as planned. And you know who I mean. And of the smaller companies, the juniors trying to build, some of them have completely failed, haven't, you know, even hit shovels to dirt. Some of them have tried and things aren't working out. They're cutting their ramp up guidance or moving the goalposts as well. Some of them are suspiciously silent and we're still waiting to hear. How's it going? So my my my view is like the demand side, as you brought up, is just getting better every day. And it was legitimate, I think, a year ago to say, well, hey, high prices will cure high prices. There's a lot of low hanging fruit here. Let's see what happens. But now we know what's happening that that low hanging fruit turned out to be not so easy to pick. So I'm I'm very bullish. But I can't say that uranium itself constitutes a cheap asset. I mean, 80, you know, it's not as dear as over triple digits, but it's not 18 or 30 or 40 or, you know, when we when we were just saying it can't stay this low. I think. Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, it sounds like we've been through your your main points of interest right now. So I will I'll send you back out onto the show floor unless you had any final thoughts to leave investors with. Yeah, I guess the you know, I started out my talk with with the Darth Vader theme because people like to call me Darth Silver and I'm the official rain on the parade. And you can hate me if you want to. But I hope you'll remember that one taking profits does not mean selling everything. I'm I'm not a bear on any of these metals. For some reason, silver bulls in particular seem to think I'm a bear if I don't insist that silver is going to the moon like today. But if your goal is to make money as opposed to be ideological about your favorite commodity, if your goal is to make money, you know, don't hate me for reminding you that nobody goes broke taking profits. You know, he lacks conviction or whatever. I mean, I'm trying to help and nobody knows what's going to happen next. And yeah, if if he takes some profits now, your favorite metal goes screaming higher from here, you'll make less money than you might have. But nobody, no mere mortal on this planet can tell you that it won't go the other way. And if you're a long suffering silver bull and you finally were right, silver went back over 50 dollars and you were right. And then it goes into reverse and you didn't take any profits and you didn't make any money. Like to me, that seems like it would be the the worst agony possible to be right, but not make any money from it. So that's all. That's really the point here is I'm not trying to knock anybody. I'm not trying to deflate anybody's balloon. I'm just trying to say, you know, my goal is to make money for my clients and and to help you and the audience to do the same. Well, very nice note to end it on. Thank you so much, as always, for coming on to talk. This was great. Thank you, John. Of course. And once again, I'm Charlotte McLeod with investing news dot com. And this is Bobo Tigre with Independent Speculator dot com.