Commodities just hit records — no oil required

The rally nobody can ignore

Commodities have been having a very dramatic week, and they didn’t even invite oil to the party. The Bloomberg Commodity Index ex-Energy just hit a fresh record, finally blowing past the 2011 peak like it had been waiting 15 years to prove a point.

That matters because it says the raw-materials move is bigger than the usual “geopolitics + crude spike” script. This is a broader squeeze across industrial metals, precious metals, and agriculture — the stuff that ends up in your power grid, your EV battery, your solar panel, and, yes, your favorite AI server farm.

Copper is doing the heavy lifting

Copper is the big tell here. Prices have surged to all-time highs as supply keeps getting pinched and demand keeps getting weirdly enormous.

A few of the pressure points:

• AI data centers need a lot more copper than traditional ones — think busbars, cabling, switchgear, the whole electrical spaghetti bowl.
• Electrification keeps adding demand from grids, EVs, and storage.
• Supply is tightening thanks to mine disruptions, lower Chilean output, and sulfuric acid export restrictions that make extraction harder.
• Freeport-McMoRan’s giant Grasberg mine is still not back at full strength, which doesn’t exactly help the vibes.

If you’re watching names like Freeport, copper ETFs, or the hyperscalers building all those data centers, this is the kind of cost pressure that can sneak into margins like a tax you didn’t know was due.

Silver’s not just a shiny rock anymore

Silver is also ripping, but this isn’t your grandpa’s “Fed cuts = buy silver” trade. The demand story is industrial now.

Roughly 60% of silver consumption is tied to industry, and solar panels, power electronics, EVs, and high-density computing gear are all hoovering it up. Meanwhile, supply shortfalls keep stacking up, which is why the market is looking less like a neat cycle and more like a supply-chain horror movie.

Big picture

This is the kind of macro move that shows up everywhere before people realize what’s changed. If the commodity rally sticks, it can ripple through capex budgets, build costs, and inflation expectations — basically turning “AI is booming” into “AI is expensive to build.” That’s a very different plot twist for investors. Big picture: the price of the future may just be going up.