Goldman: Her er de vigtigste drivkræfter på metal og energimarkederne

Following a 2025 metals rally, many commodities are off to a strong and volatile start in 2026 (Exhibit 1). Client conversations suggest that investor appetite to diversify into hard assets amidst macro and geopolitical uncertainty (sometimes associated with the debasement theme) is a key driver of the rally.^[1]

Hard assets are tangible, physical items that have intrinsic value, including commodities, real estate, infrastructure and equipment, and tend to hold value over time, especially during inflation or economic uncertainty.^[2] Given the rotation from soft assets (e.g. fixed income or capital-light equities) to hard assets, we analyze the link between active investor positioning and prices, which is close for commodities such as oil (Exhibit 2). Specifically, how would a sustained rise in active investor positioning into commodities affect prices? And what are the risks from this rotation to the prices of gold, copper, and oil?

There are two types of investors in commodity futures markets: “speculators” or “active” investors, including hedge funds, CTAs and swap dealers, and “index” or “passive” investors, comprised of pension funds, endowments and other real money investors. Our statistical analysis focuses on the price impact of active investors because index investors tend to have little, if any, impact on prices.^[3] That said, investor conversations suggest that certain passive investors (e.g. pensions funds) are increasingly considering rotating to hard assets, including commodities.

To understand investors’ impact on prices of commodities–physical assets that deliver intrinsic value when consumed–consider the following linkages between physical (or spot) markets and futures markets:

Diversification flows of investors can drive very large short-run commodity price increases because commodity markets are small versus investor portfolios, dominated by the large equity and bond markets. Open interest in the global copper market is ~135 times smaller than the amount of outstanding privately owned US Treasuries (Exhibit 3).^[4]

If investors buy futures believing that commodity markets will tighten significantly in the future or provide significant hedging value against tail risks, futures prices can rise above fundamentals. While futures selling by commodity producers can dampen the price boost from investor buying, the net short-run price boost can still be very large if inflows from investors with deep pockets dwarf corporate hedging flows (as has happened since 2025 in the platinum and palladium rallies (Exhibit 1)).

Energy and agriculture historically tend to perform well when large unexpected inflation shocks hit for two reasons. First, energy/food supply disruptions often cause inflation spikes. Second, demand for energy and food (key necessities) tends to remain robust even when inflation-adjusted incomes drop.

However, precious metals and copper have already benefited more and could see greater price upside than oil and natural gas from a hard assets rotation, driven by market concerns about future macro policy, geopolitical or inflation shocks for three reasons.

A given volume of investor diversification flows can boost prices more in metals markets, which tend to be small or very small in the case of the ex-gold precious markets such as silver, platinum, and palladium, which have rallied sharply since 2025 (Exhibit 1).

Higher energy prices incentivize short-cycle shale supply, which in turn dampens the price boost from investment flows. In contrast, supply is particularly constrained and largely long-cycle for copper and especially precious metals.

Gold supply doesn’t feature in our demand-driven framework explaining gold prices. The reason is that the above-ground stock edges up at a very modest and stable pace because this stock dwarfs annual mine production, which is stable, and largely unresponsive to price (Exhibit 4).

Copper mine supply is constrained and long-cycle as it typically takes ~17 years from discovering a copper mine to first production.^[5]

When financial flows push prices above fundamentals, higher supply and lower demand can result in inventory accumulation until hitting storage capacity limits.

Storage capacity limits are typically lower for energy (and agriculture) than for easy-to-store metals.^[6] Hitting storage constraints (“tank tops”) can substantially reduce roll returns^[7] on energy futures and trigger price corrections, as happened in oil markets in 2020.

In contrast, roll costs tend to remain limited on futures for easy-to-store metals such as copper (Exhibit 5), and don’t exist when owning physically backed assets such as precious ETFs.

Dynamic curve strategies dampen futures’ roll cost when inventories are near storage limits (i.e. when the front of the curve is upward sloping/in contango) by going out on the flatter part of the curve to roll. That said, these strategies incentivize production by raising long-dated futures prices. But because supply tends be long-cycle for mined metals, the near-term negative impact on spot prices from higher supply/inventories is more limited for long-cycle metals than for shale energy. This, again, implies that investor flows can boost prices more for metals.

Roll costs don’t exist when investors don’t own futures but instead own physically backed assets such as ETFs, a key vehicle for exposure to gold and silver in US private sector portfolios.

In addition to not facing potentially very negative roll costs, the prominence of physically backed instruments such as ETFs (or tokenized gold) can also amplify the price boost from investor inflows by reducing available inventory not backing up ETFs in pricing centers to very low levels. This is precisely what has happened to silver since last year. ^[8]

Speculation around US trade policy–with silver theoretically eligible for tariffs of up to 50%–prompted pre-positioning of metal into the US in 2025, drawing inventory out of London and reducing the available float. Thinner inventories have created conditions for squeezes, where rallies accelerate as ETF investor flows absorb remaining metal in the London vaults and reverse sharply when tightness eases.

We next estimate the risks from the rotation in hard assets to our price forecasts for gold, copper, and oil.

Gold’s limited, slow-moving, price-inelastic supply is what has given gold its status as a neutral store of value and is also why gold is likely the cleanest commodity expression of the rotation in hard assets/private sector diversification theme.

Private sector diversification is also the key upside risk to our $5,400 Dec26 forecast, which only assumes i) that central banks continue to buy at their elevated pace of the past 12 months and ii) a modest boost to ETF holdings from 50bp of Fed cuts.

With gold ETF allocations in US private sector financial portfolios at only ~0.2%, there is room for additional diversification into gold. We estimate that every 1bp increase in the gold share of US financial portfolios–driven by incremental gold purchases–raises prices by 1.5%. (This diversification is increasingly expressed via call options, which has also boosted price volatility).

Copper has already benefited and may benefit further from the hard assets rotation as it combines constrained supply, an attractive long-run demand outlook, and ease of storage. That said, measures of active investor positioning have recently moderated even if prices stay elevated (Exhibit 8).

While we are long-term bullish copper (with a $15,000/t forecast for 2035), our near-term base case remains that the LME copper price moderates from $12,994/t to $11,200/t by 2026Q4 because prices have overshot our estimate of fair value. This fair value estimate is based on ex-US inventories (because LME prices are set in London), which declined in 2024 (as anticipation of potential US tariffs pulled copper in the US) but have recently built, as China copper demand has softened.

We next estimate the upside risks to our 2026Q4 copper forecast from a potential rise in positioning on the hard assets rotation in 3 steps.

First, we estimate a short-term boost to copper prices from a 1pp increase (0.1 standard deviation) in net managed money as % of open interest of 0.7% (Exhibit 9). This is equivalent to a 6.9% short-term copper price boost from a 1 standard deviation year-over-year change in positioning. To be clear, this short-term relationship is not entirely causal as active investors typically increase net length when the outlook for physical balances (or the skew of risks around it) is tightening.^[9]

Second, we estimate that this boost from a 1pp increase in net managed money as % of open interest moderates from 0.7% to 0.4% after 1 year as scrap supply rises and as demand softens on substitution in response to higher prices (Exhibit 10). The appendix illustrates the significant response of copper scrap supply and of China copper demand to prices (Exhibit 15, Exhibit 16).^[10]

Third, we apply our rule of thumb for the year-later price impact of positioning increases in 3 risk scenarios (Exhibit 11):

While we see metals as a cleaner expression of the hard assets theme than energy, our investor conversations suggest that the hard assets rotation has contributed to the year-to-date rise in active investor oil positioning from low levels along with related geopolitical uncertainty.

While our long-run crude oil price forecast is above the forwards (Brent 2030 forecast of $75), our near-term base case remains that Brent moderates from $68/bbl to a bottom of $54 by 2026Q4 for two reasons. First, we expect a 2026 surplus of just over 2mb/d assuming the January supply disruptions in Kazakhstan and the US ease and no large new supply disruptions (if US policymakers focus on affordability). Second, we assume that the share of global inventory increases in the OECD commercial pricing centers picks up from its unusually low just under 10% share in 2025 to the historical norm of ~30% (as the pace of accumulation of sanctioned barrels on water moderates).

We next estimate upside risks to our oil price forecast, including from a potential rise in positioning, in 3 steps.

First, we estimate a short-term boost to oil prices from a 1pp increase in net managed money as % of open interest of 3.7% (Exhibit 12). This is equivalent to a 10% short-term oil price boost from a 1 standard deviation year-over-year change in positioning.

Second, we estimate that this oil price boost from a 1pp increase in net managed money as % of open interest moderates from 3.7% to 2.8% after 1 year as short-cycle shale supply rises and demand softens in response to higher prices (Exhibit 10, left panel).

Third, we apply our estimate of the short-run price impact of positioning increases and our pricing framework in 2 positioning scenarios:

We also consider three other scenarios while keeping positioning from our baseline. The two extra upside scenarios assume i) a 1mb/d miss in sanctioned supply ($8 of upside to our 2026Q4 base case) or ii) an equally low 7% OECD landed share in global inventory builds as in 2025 ($9 upside). The final downside scenario assumes a beat in sanctioned supply, which rises to 1.0mb/d by end-2027, for instance under a Russia-Ukraine peace deal ($2 downside).

Our analysis suggests that the investor rotation in hard assets can keep several metals prices high for longer, including above what physical fundamentals justify, which we think is the case right now for copper.