The S&P 500’s Biggest Blind Spot Right Now

On Saturday, my eight-year-old nephew FaceTimed his grandmother thousands of miles away. Crystal clear video. Zero lag. He showed off his new drawings, they laughed together, and for fifteen minutes, thousands of miles felt like nothing.

When he hung up, I sat there thinking about what actually made that call possible.

Not the app. Not the phone. Not even the satellite.

Copper. Miles of it. Wrapped in cables under the Pacific Ocean. Refined from ore pulled out of a hole in Chile or Peru.

My nephew doesn't know this, and like most people, doesn't even think about it.

We've been sold on the idea of a "digital" economy. The idea that it’s all software, all cloud, all weightless bits zipping through the ether.

But the truth is, every piece of technology you touch depends on materials clawed from the earth. And we're running out faster than we're finding new sources.

This isn't some distant problem for your grandchildren. It's reshaping your investments, your cost of living, and possibly the balance of global power right now.

The Narrative Wall Street Keeps Selling

For decades, the pitch has been simple: The future is digital. Buy tech. Buy software. Buy AI.

I've made money on tech plays. You probably have too.

But here's what they rarely mention at investor conferences or on CNBC.

Every AI data center, every electric vehicle, every wind turbine, every smartphone requires physical materials that are becoming desperately scarce.

The numbers should keep you up at night.

S&P Global projects copper supply peaking around 2030 at 33 million metric tons. Projected demand by 2040? 42 million metric tons. That's a 10 million-ton shortfall, which translates to a 24% deficit.

Silver has been in structural deficit for six consecutive years. Cumulative shortfall since 2021 is roughly 800 million ounces.

This year alone? Another 200 million-ounce hole.

Uranium? The World Nuclear Association estimates a cumulative deficit of 1.125 billion pounds through 2040. That's 70 million pounds annually that simply doesn't exist.

And the kicker, China controls the processing and refining of almost all these critical materials.

They spent decades building this capability while we argued about interest rates and scrolled TikTok.

I grew up watching my parents work themselves to exhaustion, playing by rules rigged against them. I swore I'd find a different way.

Part of that way is seeing what others miss, the real game beneath the headlines.

Right now, the real game is literally underground.

The AI Bottleneck Nobody's Discussing

At Davos, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said the AI revolution will require over $600 billion in data center capital expenditure this year alone.

What Fink didn't mention, but is implied: You can't build data centers without copper. Massive amounts of it.

A single Microsoft data center requires around 2,177 tons of copper for just 50 megawatts of capacity. That’s roughly 27 tons per megawatt.

Enough copper to wire a small city, except this isn’t a small city, it’s just one building.

Now multiply that across every hyperscaler, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, all racing to build AI infrastructure as fast as humanly possible.

Resource analyst Craig Tindale put it bluntly in a recent report: "The danger is that the current wave of data center construction may represent the last tranche that can be completed under existing material constraints."

We might be looking at the last generation of data centers that can actually get built.

It’s not money or technology at the center of the bottleneck. The bottleneck is that we don't have enough copper coming out of the ground.

Any tech CEO can raise billions, and they often do. That's actually the easy part.

But you can't code your way out of a copper shortage. You can't 3D print rare-earth magnets. You can't download uranium from the cloud.

AI revenue scales through data centers. Data centers scale through power delivery.

Power delivery scales through copper-intensive systems: transformers, substations, high-voltage cabling, busbars, switchgear, grid interconnections.

No copper? No AI boom.

China's Quiet Checkmate

While American investors obsess over the next AI chatbot, China has been playing a completely different game.

In January 2026, China classified silver as a strategic asset and limited the number of companies approved to export refined silver. Shanghai silver now trades at a 10% premium over global prices.

They've done the same with antimony, a metal critical to ammunition, missile systems, and flame retardants.

After China's export restrictions, antimony prices rose fivefold. Exports dropped 97%.

Rare earths? China controls over 90% of global processing capacity for the magnets that power everything from F-35 fighter jets to your car's power steering.

Beijing figured out something Washington is only now starting to make moves on. Whoever controls the physical materials controls the future.

What good is America's AI advantage if we can't build the hardware to run it? What good is our military superiority if we can't manufacture the weapons systems?

The U.S. Defense Stockpile has about 1,100 tons of antimony. Annual industrial consumption is 23,000 tons.

We'd burn through our entire reserve in less than three weeks.

Every time Beijing restricts exports of a critical material, that's a signal. They're telling you exactly what they think is valuable.

The Numbers That Should Change Your Mind

Despite everything I just told you, the mining sector still trades at a 20% discount to the historical price-to-book value of the broader market.

Meanwhile, technology and related capex is approaching 50% of the S&P 500's total capital expenditure.

One of these numbers is going up. The other is going down. And I don't think it's the one Wall Street is betting on.

Look at what's already happening. Year-to-date, gold miners are up 29.6%. Silver miners are up 45.0%. The S&P 500? Up just 1.8%.

The ratio of gold to the U.S. Consumer Price Index recently broke out from a 45-year downtrend line.

Despite the recent pullback, silver is starting to outperform gold, and that’s historically a signal that the commodity bull market is broadening.

Despite the current run in silver, most investors haven't acted.

They're still chasing AI stocks. Still believing the "digital economy" narrative. Still ignoring the dirt beneath the data center.

For years, I've argued that a classic paradigm shift into new market leaders was starting.

One featuring commodities, commodity-related sectors, and inflation-sensitive assets. The data is proving that thesis correct.

How to Position Yourself

I'm not telling you to sell all your tech stocks tomorrow. That would be reckless.

But I am telling you to rebalance your thinking.

The world doesn't run on software. It runs on copper, silver, uranium, rare earths, and a dozen other materials you've probably never heard of.

The companies that mine, process, and refine these materials are about to become some of the most important and valuable businesses on the planet.

My framework:

Understand this is a multi-decade trend. We're not talking about a trade that plays out over six months.

We're talking about a fundamental restructuring of the global economy. Position accordingly.

Focus on the bottlenecks.

Copper for electrical infrastructure. Uranium for nuclear power. Rare earths for magnets. Silver for solar panels and electronics.

These are the materials where supply simply cannot meet demand.

Watch China. Every time Beijing restricts exports of a critical material, that's a signal. They're telling you exactly what they think is valuable. Listen.

Don't ignore the political tailwinds. The U.S. government is waking up. Billions of taxpayer dollars are about to pour into domestic mining and processing.

Companies positioned to receive that capital will benefit enormously.

Some of our earlier recommendations inside of Moonshot Minute have already received billions from the government.

We spent decades offshoring our industrial base, convinced the future was all about bits and bytes.

Now we're scrambling to rebuild what we gave away, and the companies doing that rebuilding are trading at historic discounts.

The Bottom Line

My nephew’s video call to his grandmother worked because someone, somewhere, dug copper and other metals out of the ground.

The AI revolution everyone's so excited about? It depends entirely on materials we're running out of.

The future isn't digital, it’s physical. The investors who understand this and position themselves now, before the crowd catches on, will build real, lasting wealth.

Whether you do it by joining me in Moonshot Minute Premium or not doesn’t matter.

Most people are staring at screens while the real action happens underground.

Don't make the same mistake.

Double D

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