00:00So tariffs back on the agenda again. I mean, you know, once again, I guess policy uncertainty is
00:05going to benefit some of these safe havens like gold and silver. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's
00:09been a big part of the story. So we've seen a record month of inflows in January for gold ETFs,
00:15for example, which I think showed us a lot of reaction to the geopolitical uncertainty.
00:19Now we have tariff uncertainty. We can see prices are both stronger this morning. So I think that's
00:23telling you that there's this broad support and then obviously a bit of dollar weakness as well,
00:27providing that additional. Yeah. So one thing that I was thinking about is there was this FT
00:31report that came out two weeks ago saying that the Trump administration were thinking of dialing back
00:35some of the tariffs on steel, aluminium, other specific metals. And I wonder now whether Trump
00:43may reconsider that because they're still constitutional and therefore he may actually
00:49look to lean more heavily on some of these sectoral tariffs. How do you think about it from a metals
00:54perspective here? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great point because the ones that have had these
00:59proper investigations behind them and that there is sort of this basis for these tariffs to be in
01:04place, those are the levers he can now use. I would say as well on that report we had from
01:09the FT,
01:09it was really around those derivative products and not limiting everything, but perhaps limiting ones
01:14where the tariffs had got a bit too specific and it was becoming too much administration to make it
01:20sort of worthwhile rather than an overall rollback. I think that the U.S. does seem to be still quite
01:25committed to steel and aluminium tariffs. Yeah. And what about copper? We're trading very close to,
01:31again, you know, $13,000 a ton, I think it is. You know, we've come up a little bit, but
01:35still
01:36very lofty valuations. Do you see these levels holding? I think what we've seen is copper is trading
01:42extremely well relative to some of the micro data we can see in it. And I think the way we
01:48would frame it
01:48at the moment is that pullbacks are likely to be quite limited. We're seeing macro support drivers
01:54for copper, particularly I think this thematic of scarcity of resource, everyone trying to look
02:00at strategic reserves, thinking about, you know, have I got security of supply? Maybe I need to
02:04hold a little bit more in inventory. I think that's quite supportive for copper. We've had several
02:09years, well, a decade now really of underinvestment, so that supply pipeline just not coming through.
02:14And then we've got these themes like data centers supporting that broader demand. So even though
02:18the Chinese demand has looked a bit softer. Well, this is what I was going to ask you about
02:21Chinese demand. I know it's Lunar New Year holiday now, but in general, how has Chinese demand
02:26transpired versus expectations in copper? Yeah. So I'd say in any sort of normal time,
02:32we'd be probably talking a lot more about Chinese demand weakness and probably would have been seeing
02:36a much weaker copper price than we are currently. Chinese demand has actually been quite soft,
02:40arguably since about September. So we can see apparent consumption has been negative. We can
02:45see grid spend, air conditioner output all down year on year for the last few months.
02:49EV output growth has slowed. So it has looked quite soft for a while and arguably as copper has rallied.
02:55Now, the big question is going to be when China comes back to the market tomorrow,
02:59do we see copper go back up? And do they come in and re-engage after stepping arguably away from
03:05the
03:06market for a while? And then also, how are inventories going to progress? Because that's going to be
03:10our earliest indicator. So we know inventories will build for a couple of months, but then we want
03:16to see them rolling over. And that's going to tell us that Chinese activity is back. And I think if
03:19it's not, if that's not what happens, that's where the markets might start to question these very
03:24elevated copper prices. Okay. Good to know. One thing I want to ask you about, the U.S. launched
03:29Project Vault, which is essentially a critical mineral stockpile. I think they put a value of about
03:36$12 million. What are the critical minerals that should benefit the most from this?
03:41So the critical minerals list is a long one. There's about 60 that are covered in the U.S.
03:48GS critical minerals list. So it could be fairly wide ranging in terms of what they do. At the
03:53moment, we have very little detail around what's going to be first. And I think there were some
03:57comments around sort of avoiding things that happened last year. So I think potentially rare earths is
04:03one that you would look to see in focus. Arguably on copper, I would say the U.S. already has
04:08a
04:08critical mineral stockpile in that the U.S. has brought in a huge amount of metal. Now it's not
04:13classified as such. But I think there would be incentive to try and keep that metal in the
04:17country as much as possible. And that for the copper market is quite bullish, if that's the case,
04:21because it almost means we can take that big inventory bill that's happened, just say that that's
04:26copper that's removed from the market, and we can sort of ignore that now. So I'd say we'll likely
04:31try and keep that metal in the country.
04:33Okay. I mean, it seems to be a pretty constructive thesis across the board for all metals, for
04:38critical minerals. Are there any metals out there where you're slightly more skeptical
04:42on upside versus current valuations?
04:45Yes. I'd say on iron ore, that's one where we're being a bit more cautious. Prices have
04:50actually been pulling back over the last week or two. We do expect Chinese steel output to fall
04:56this year. Supply has been relatively strong. But I would say as well, we probably are not
05:01too far from where we start to hit a bit of cost sensitivity. The weaker dollar also is having
05:06upward impact on cost curves. So we think we do need to think about that. So iron ore would be
05:11one
05:11where we'd be a bit less constructive. Lithium is the other one where we think is probably overshot,
05:15where it should be. There has been a shift in the story with these stationary storage batteries that
05:20has been a positive for demand. But because we've had this big rally in prices, every few days now,
05:25a producer is coming out and saying, we're looking at restarting, we're looking at growing
05:29production. So we are getting a supply response here.
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