Metals and harvests: The materials that tell the world's story

Behind every object, there is a raw material. Copper in wires, wheat in bread, lithium in batteries.

Their prices do not move like shares. They tell the story of industry's health, the weather, wars.

Let's start with copper. It is in houses, cars, power grids. Everywhere people build.

When the economy speeds up, people build more, and copper rises. When it slows, copper often falls before the rest.

Hence its nickname among financiers: doctor copper. A metal with a degree in economics.

It does not predict everything, of course. But many analysts watch its price like a thermometer.

Second story: silver. And two very rich Texan brothers, the Hunts.

In the seventies, they bought silver in enormous quantities. Metal, and futures contracts.

In early nineteen seventy-nine, an ounce was worth about six dollars. In January nineteen eighty, nearly fifty. More than eight times as much.

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The market authorities then changed the rules: buying silver contracts on credit was restricted.

On the twenty-seventh of March nineteen eighty, the price collapsed. It ended nearly eighty per cent below its peak.

The Hunts could no longer pay their margin calls. Years later, they ended up bankrupt.

Lesson: you can buy up a whole market. But you cannot stop the rules changing, or the sellers arriving.

Third material: wheat. A plant, but also one of the most closely watched markets in the world.

Russia and Ukraine together export nearly a third of it. Black Sea wheat feeds North Africa and the Middle East.

In February two thousand twenty-two, Russia invaded Ukraine. The ports were blocked. In March, wheat hit a record in Chicago.

For countries that import their bread, it is not a line on a screen. It is the price of a meal.

Last family: battery metals. Lithium, cobalt, and the rare earths used in magnets and motors.

Lithium soared in two thousand twenty-one and two thousand twenty-two, driven by electric cars. Then it collapsed the following year.

Rare earths raise a question of power. China mines most of them, and refines the vast majority.

Whoever controls the material controls part of industry. That is the geopolitics of batteries.

Copper, silver, wheat, lithium. Each follows its own logic: the factory, speculation, the harvest, the border.

That is why investing in commodities is so hard. You are betting on the real world, with all its accidents.