The current geopolitical shift toward resource nationalism is focused on critical metals and minerals, not oil. The crude market is relatively well-supplied by producers like the U.S. and potentially Venezuela, making the 'death of globalism' primarily a story about securing supply chains for industrial and technological metals.
The traditional left-right political axis is obsolete. A better framework is the 'political horseshoe,' which captures the generational conflict where younger people, facing a future of deglobalization and AI job displacement, are forming new coalitions outside the established consensus upheld by older generations.
As globalism dies and treasuries lose appeal, central banks are buying gold. The super-bull case for silver is that they re-adopt it as a reserve asset. Its critical role in energy production (solar) gives it a unique utility that gold lacks, making it attractive in a resource-scarce world.
The next major hardware cycle will be driven by user demand for local AI models that run on personal machines, ensuring privacy and control away from corporate or government surveillance. This shift from a purely cloud-centric paradigm will spark massive demand for more powerful personal computers and laptops.
A temporary mismatch is emerging in the AI sector where massive capital investment in compute is running ahead of widespread monetization. This could create an 'air gap' around 2027 where quarterly-focused investors panic, offering a prime entry point for those with longer, multi-year time horizons.
The Western belief that free trade would cause authoritarian states like China to liberalize has proven false. Instead, this policy created a powerful manufacturing competitor whose interests diverge from the West's. The current era of deglobalization is an unwinding of this flawed foundational premise of the post-war order.
Donald Trump's seemingly chaotic tariff policy functions as a 'mixed strategy' in game theory. By introducing randomness and forcing a response, he makes other nations reveal their true intentions, distinguishing allies willing to negotiate from rivals who default to immediate hostility, such as China.
In a volatile, rapidly rising market, an 'options crawl' strategy allows investors to stay in the trade while managing risk. It involves selling expensive, high-strike calls that speculators are buying and using the proceeds to finance calls closer to the current price, thus maintaining directional exposure with a defined risk profile.
Silver's indispensable role in high-growth solar panel manufacturing fundamentally changes its investment thesis from a negative-carry store of value to a productive asset. This demand for its use in green energy infrastructure effectively gives the metal a positive yield, creating an attractive positive convexity profile for investors.
Unlike oil, high silver prices do not quickly trigger more supply because most silver is a byproduct of mining for other metals like zinc and copper. This inelastic supply, coupled with surging industrial demand from sectors like solar energy, creates a classic setup for a significant price squeeze and parabolic moves.