This Metal Is Set to Explode (Not Gold or Silver)

Hey, Ross here:

This isn’t just a price spike. It’s a fundamental dislocation of the market. I’m going to show you exactly why industrial metals are outshining gold and silver—and how you can position yourself in this metals market bull run before the rest of Wall Street wakes up to what’s happening.

You remember the GameStop saga. During the pandemic, that stock shot up 2,000%. It was the birth of the meme stock—a phenomenon where retail investors, not Wall Street heavyweights, banded together to drive prices higher. Before 2020, this had never happened. Not once. Now, that same chaotic, explosive energy has found a new home. 

On the other side of the world, a new meme trade is taking off. Investors are piling in hand over fist, driving trading volumes to 500% of normal levels. The hottest investment in China right now is nickel. And I’m going to show you how to position yourself to take advantage of the next metals market bull run. 

The Shanghai Surge

The numbers coming out of the Shanghai Futures Exchange are staggering.

In January, combined trading volume in aluminum, copper, nickel, and tin futures jumped 86% month-over-month. That brought total volume to 78 million lots.

When volume multiplies by five, you have to ask who’s behind the trade. This is not commercial hedging. This is not manufacturers trying to lock in supply for production.

This is speculation on a massive scale.

We’re seeing buying behavior in these assets that the market has frankly never seen before. Commodities don’t typically trade like meme stocks. They move in slow, steady, multi-year trends.

That dynamic is quickly changing.

The Contagion Effect

We’ve seen this movie before.

Silver skyrocketed from $70 to $120 an ounce in a single month before exchanges raised margin requirements to slow down the move. But price action like that becomes contagious.

When investors see others making life-changing money in a short amount of time, they want to recreate the magic. The message boards and social media channels that hyped the first move become wildly popular. And no one wants to miss out on the next one.

We saw this a few years ago. First, it was GameStop and AMC. Then traders piled into KOSS, Sundial, BlackBerry, and Bed Bath & Beyond. Last year was Krispy Kreme, Open Door, and Rocket Labs.

The same thing is happening right now. Everyone saw the record moves in precious metals like silver, gold, and palladium.

This is the second wave.

And it’s happening in industrial metals: aluminum, copper, nickel, even tin.

Why Nickel?

The star of the show so far has been nickel.

Last month, nickel contracts traded 30 million lots. That’s up 300% from December.

You might be thinking: Nickel? Who cares about nickel? There’s no shortage of the stuff. It’s not a critical input for data centers like copper.

Why are they piling into nickel? Because it’s easier to move the price.

To understand this, you have to look at the total value of these markets. If you wanted to buy every ounce of metal in existence, here’s what it would cost:

• Gold Market: $30 trillion
• Silver Market: $6 trillion (about 1/5th of gold)
• Copper Market: ~$200 billion
• Aluminum Market: ~$100 billion (half of copper)
• Nickel Market: $20 billion

See the discrepancy?

The gold market is massive. But the nickel market is very thinly traded—just $20 billion. That makes it more volatile. It squeezes easier. It moves faster.

That’s why traders are piling in.

Think back to Bed Bath & Beyond in 2020. Did people buy it because it was a great company? No, of course not. The thing was going bankrupt. Yet the stock shot up 20-fold in four months. Kids in their 20s retired off that move.

That is the goal here. That is why they’re buying nickel. Retail traders in China are piling in. Social media chatter is exploding. Nickel is becoming the new meme stock of the commodity world.

And when volume triples in a month, when retail money starts swarming, my advice: don’t ignore it.

The Tin Anomaly

If you want to see just how extreme this speculation has become, look at tin.

The futures market has become completely detached from the physical one. And when that happens, volatility explodes.

Why tin of all things? Same reason as nickel. It’s a tiny market. In fact, it’s the only metal more thinly traded than nickel.

Exchanges Are Powerless

The exchanges, as they do, have tried to slow the momentum. They’ve used all their usual tricks: increasing margin requirements, regulatory tightening.

The Shanghai exchange has intervened 38 times in the last two months.

The result? Not weakness. Acceleration.

Prices keep going up. And in all likelihood, this is just the beginning. The metals rush is far from over.

The Macro Convergence

While this movement is driven by speculation, it’s colliding with a very real macro story.

Even without a shortage in nickel or tin, demand is still strong. The world is in a period of electrification, AI infrastructure buildout, energy transition, grid updates, defense spending, and strategic stockpiling.

Metals are the foundation of all of it. Copper runs the grid. Nickel powers batteries. Tin is critical for semiconductors and electronics.

When speculation collides with a real macro story, when those two forces align, that’s when you get explosive multi-year cycles.

How to Position Yourself for the Nickel Boom

1. Don’t Chase Vertical Candles

The worst thing you can do is chase vertical candles blindly. The best time to buy is on a pullback to key support or a breakout following a multi-week consolidation.

2. Watch the Consolidation Patterns

The Sprott Nickel Miners ETF (ticker: NIKL) shows that the strongest moves came as the stock was emerging from consolidation. Those are where you want to buy.

NIKL is now consolidating again, potentially setting up what I believe will be another quick move higher.

3. Use ETFs to Hedge

Unless you want to store nickel by the metric ton or enter the world of futures contracts, the easiest way to profit off these moves is through mining stocks.

When metal prices surge, the companies who mine those metals see their profits surge as well. These are the stocks we want to own.

• For Nickel: NIKL holds a basket of 25 of these miners operating all over the globe.
• For Tin: The WisdomTree Tin ETF (ticker: TINM).

The Ignition Phase

History shows that commodities tend to outperform late in cycles when inflation expectations rise and real assets regain favor. That is exactly where we are today.

We have record-breaking trading volume in industrial metals markets—five times the normal activity. Nickel contracts are up 300% in a month. Tin futures are exceeding global annual usage in a single day of trading.

Retail speculation is surging. Exchanges are scrambling to contain it. And yet, the rush continues.

Is nickel the new meme stock? Maybe. But more importantly, are we witnessing the ignition phase of the next great metals bull market?

I believe we are, and I am positioning my money accordingly.