The near-future with stocks

Recent events in the stock markets and in the geo-political realm suggests we are witnessing a paradigm shift away from the dematerialization of the 1990s to 2020s (software, platforms, intangibles) and a return to material constraints - energy, metals, and infrastructure for example.

AI, to say the obvious, is a game-changer for white-collar productivity. Away with the laptop jobs of software engineering, consultancy, data science, administrator, and so on, with rapid new releases from AI mammoths like Anthropic, directly targeting the ‘tedious’ sub-tasks frequent in office jobs. New LLMs are also on the cusp of making ground-breaking advancement in sciences, with stories of AI being able to spot cancer cells far sooner than a human doctor could. Its applications are potentially endless.

This excitement and speculation has sent stock markets to unprecedented highs with the AI wave which has potential to transform white-collar jobs, speeding up production from hours to minutes. Around the world blue-chip stock markets for both developed and emerging markets have soared in value, primarily to technology companies and companies in the technology supply chain.

Alongside OpenAI, Alphabet, Anthropic, the companies creating GPUs like NVIDIA have exponentially grown in value, as well as the companies making the subcomponents for these GPUs. SanDisk, for one, has seen their value increase by over 1,000% in the past 10 years as they help with supplying memory and storage for the GPUs.

Going further into the supply chain, we find more sectors that have benefitted tremendously to support the compute power for these AI companies. Precious metal mining companies - mining silver, copper, palladium, and more - have seen increases in their value, alongside advanced energy generation sub-sectors, helping develop mini-reactors for example. Everyone involved in creating the GPUs and powering the data centres for AI will continue to see growth for as long as AI is socially accepted.

Reported in the Financial Times, precious metals are quickly running out of stock. The precious metal mines have been underinvested and lacking maintenance, even causing casualties in some mines around the globe. Pushback against the creation of more mines alongside current dilapidated mines will make precious metals increasingly valuable as they grow more scarce, increasing the stock value of the previous metal mining companies and making the components required for AI even more expensive.

Another metal that has seen phenomenal growth is gold. Gold has increased over 100% in the last year alone. Gold is interesting in that given the geo-political developments in the last year predominantly with Donald Trump enacting tariffs and rolling these back, he is de-stabilizing the strong reliance the dollar previously had and being used as the base of global transactions. Countries around the world, previously using the dollar for large transactions, are now steering away to their own currencies. He has publicly stated he has wanted to decrease the value of the dollar, making American exports more feasible with other countries.

Gold is now being seen as the safe haven to store value, driving up the value. As well as Trump, Russia and China have bought gold in enormous amounts in the past 2 years also. There are many assumptions you can make about China buying gold, ranging from a more innocent point of the nation wanting to diversify its assets, to more cynical ideas about China preparing to invade Taiwan, keeping gold as a reliable transactional asset.

This, as well as recent comments from the World Economic Forum, has now led Europe to really consider where it wants to stand globally. Trump is sabotaging the NATO alliance, and we are witnessing the growth of a multi-polar world order. Europe now has to either still submit itself to the US, or take a step of making itself more self-sufficient. Last year’s investment into Europe’s defence was the first stage of this, with likely more to come.

What does all of this have in store for ‘the future’? The US dollar is becoming less valuable over time, AI companies will still drive economic growth for now, while anxieties about AI’s use are becoming increasingly common among executives, physical metals will see huge increases in value, and defence companies, especially European, will most likely also see growth.

The US no longer holds the title of being The global leader. Multi-polarity is now on the rise and this will bring a vastly different state of play on the economic markets and shares.

This brings gold into the forefront as a safe haven, and a continuous push for all sectors that will upkeep AI’s compute power and energy usage.