Posted on X and reposted here. Everyone should focus on the aluminum section; there is little incremental information elsewhere, or it is not very tradable:

1) Copper is currently trading first on demand destruction, while aluminum is trading first on supply disruption. Gold is in a phase of “short-term liquidity-driven selling, but still-strong medium-term fundamentals.” Nickel sits between aluminum and copper, while zinc is relatively secondary overall.

2) On copper: the primary impact of the conflict on copper is not supply, but the way higher energy prices weigh on demand through the macroeconomic chain. If oil prices rise 40%, global GDP growth would likely be dragged down by around 0.6 percentage points, while copper demand has an elasticity to GDP of about 1.2 times. This implies potential downward revision pressure of 0.7%-0.8% on copper demand.

3) This is not a small amount. The global copper market is around 2500-2600 ten thousand tonnes, so each 1% change in demand essentially represents 25-26 ten thousand tonnes of copper. In other words, even a slight deterioration at the macro level would be enough to cause a material shock to the copper balance.

4) Copper prices have remained fairly resilient so far because, over the past two or three years, the “macro” and “micro” pictures have consistently been out of sync. As 2026 began, the macro picture looked good: PMI stabilized and real assets regained favor. But the micro picture was poor, with high visible inventories and China close to a “buyers’ strike.” This time, the adjustment has gone in precisely the opposite direction: the macro narrative has been damaged, but China’s micro picture has begun to recover at lower prices.

5) Signs of a recovery in China’s micro picture are important: after SHFE prices fell below 10 ten thousand yuan, destocking after the Spring Festival was faster than expected, import arbitrage reopened, and operating rates at semi-finished-product processors recovered. This suggests copper is not collapsing across the board, but is in a transition phase of “macro deterioration first, with the micro picture temporarily stabilizing.”

6) The reason is that, over the medium term, copper’s average drawdown in recessionary environments has historically been close to 30%, while the market has clearly not priced in this level of risk. At most, it is only just beginning to wake up from being “overly complacent.”

7) On the sulfur supply chain, copper production in the Democratic Republic of the Congo SX-EW is about 180 ten thousand tonnes of cathode copper, or 7%-8% of global supply, and depends on Middle Eastern sulfur. But the transport chain itself takes 1-3 months, and local inventories can last for around 1 months, so the sulfur issue will not erupt immediately. For now, the copper market is still “pricing demand first and supply later.”

8) So, in terms of the timeline for copper, if supply is not yet imminent over the coming month, the market will continue to prioritize trading weaker GDP, weaker demand, and a technical sell-off. The next key technical support he cited is roughly 11000-11200 dollars per tonne.

9) Aluminum’s fundamentals are almost exactly the opposite of copper’s. Middle Eastern aluminum production is about 680 ten thousand tonnes, accounting for around 7% of global supply, or around 18% of demand in the rest of the world excluding China. More importantly, apart from around 40 ten thousand tonnes, almost all of this is exposed to varying degrees of logistics risk. As a result, what the aluminum market loses first is “liquidity”; only afterward does this develop into a genuine “supply problem.”

10) What aluminum is trading first is not the disappearance of metal, but the disruption of metal flows. That is why the market first sees premiums, spreads, and competition for regional supply, rather than spot inventories suddenly falling to zero at a particular moment.

11) The truly more dangerous inflection point is on the input side for smelters. Most Middle Eastern aluminum plants initially had only about one month’s worth of alumina inventories to sustain full production. Although a few areas, such as the UAE, can extend this somewhat thanks to their own alumina or bauxite resources, once decisions to curtail production are made, it is difficult to reverse course, because shutting down and restarting aluminum smelters is very complicated.

12) This is also the source of aluminum’s asymmetry. Alba is already discussing further production curtailments, while even if Qatalum can maintain 60% operations, it remains constrained by the alumina import issue. Over the next two or three weeks, more headlines about “further production cuts/curtailments” are expected to keep coming. Once a plant is actually shut down, restoring production takes 4-6 months.

13) Aluminum is currently the clearest way to express an upside view. In aluminum, the market is likely to lose 40-50 ten thousand tonnes of effective monthly supply first, while macro-driven demand destruction only gradually becomes the main theme. So aluminum will eventually fall too, of course, but that point is more likely to come months from now, not now.

14) Aluminum’s GDP elasticity is close to 2 times, higher than copper’s 1.2 times. But even so, if supply losses approach 7%, completely offsetting them on the demand side could require a downward revision of more than 3% in GDP. The scale of that shock would itself be very large.

15) Alternative logistics options for aluminum do not currently look realistic either. Even moving finished products alone would require 300-350 trucks per day; factoring in the bulkier alumina feedstock would make the complexity rise almost exponentially. So he does not believe this problem can be “easily solved” through temporary operational adjustments.

16) On gold, the view is very much in line with that of many macro investors: a short-term decline in gold is not surprising. In the first wave of risk shocks, volatility rises, the dollar strengthens, and rate-cut expectations are priced out. Gold is often sold first to rebalance portfolios, meet margin calls, and reduce VaR, resulting in a “strong dollar, weak gold” combination.

17) But he is not turning bearish on gold over the medium term. If energy prices remain high for long enough, growth concerns will ultimately outweigh inflation concerns, the Fed will turn dovish again, and gold’s medium-term fundamentals will regain the upper hand. For now, this looks more like a first flush than a reversal of the long-term trend.

18) But gold has one major “hidden risk”: central-bank buying. Over the past two years, it was emerging-market central banks buying gold at high prices that disrupted the traditional pricing relationship between gold and real rates/ETF flows. If liquidity deteriorates significantly, and central banks first stop adding to their holdings or even sell some gold, that would undermine the foundations of the medium-term gold-price narrative.

19) Silver is weaker than gold. The reason is not simply that it is more volatile; it also has the characteristics of an industrial metal. So in an environment of high volatility and growth concerns, it usually falls further than gold and rebounds more slowly. If the disruption persists, a further rise in the gold-silver ratio is more likely.

20) Zinc and nickel are secondary battlegrounds. Zinc has been affected by Iranian concentrate flows to China, with some concentrate tightness and falling treatment charges, but this does not amount to a global-scale shock. The key thing to watch is whether higher natural gas prices will force zinc smelters in Asia or Europe to cut production. Nickel is also exposed to risk because Indonesia’s HPAL depends on sulfur, but its inventory buffer is larger than aluminum’s, so in the short term it is more affected by macro-driven liquidation than by an immediate supply shock.

21) If the entire conference call is distilled into an actionable framework, the rough ranking is: among base metals, favor long aluminum and short copper; in terms of resilience, nickel is preferable to copper; among precious metals, remain bullish on gold over the medium term and buy dips, but stay cautious on silver and other white metals in the short term.