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The next year is going to be yet another tough-to-tip season for commodities, with top analysts across the board already suggesting 2025 will be “awfully foggy” for anyone trying to hold the reigns on investments.
That doesn’t mean we can’t take a stab tough – especially with the help of Lowell’s chief investment officer, John Forwood, who joined HotCopper to talk about the future of commodity sectors (from uranium and lithium to gold, copper, and iron ore) in a holiday season webinar with Sonia Madigan.
Here’s what Mr Forwood had to say on the future of the five top-watched commodities.
Uranium market could get tighter
“The fundamentals for uranium remain excellent and the build-out of nuclear reactors in China and under contracting of utilities globally means the pressure on the uranium price could well be on the upside. We had a pullback from US$100 odd a pound earlier this year to around US$77 to US$80 a pound.
“The other factor is the curtailment of supply bans on Russian-enriched uranium, problems throughout this year there even as it produces about 4% of the world’s uranium.
“I think both supply and demand both indicate the market could get tighter.”
Has gold peaked after glamour bull rush?
“We’ve hit a number of record highs in US-dollar gold in 2024. Post the U.S. election, there was a substantial pullback but we’ve seen it start to climb back. Even [just recently] there’s been great price action; the indicators have been pretty positive.
“The major buyers have been central banks and they are going to continue to buy, in my view. Factors as to why they’ve been buying haven’t gone away.”
Lithium’s rough ride not over
“It’s been a very tough year for lithium, in the resources sector the share prices of lithium companies have been hit the hardest of any of the commodity sectors on the ASX so I think we have found a bottom but the consensus is that things will probably bump along here for the best part of the next 12 months now.
“Analysts are looking for an uptick around this time next year so I think lithium markets are small and it’s easy to swing from over-supplied to under-supplied quite quickly.”
Iron ore continues to “defy gravity”
“A number of analysts have called for iron ore to be significantly lower in 2025. I don’t think you could say it’s defying gravity [Editor’s note, if this is a Wicked reference from John it’s a very good one] but it’s it’s held up above around US$100 a ton for the majority of the year so that’s a very healthy price. China is the biggest off-taker of aviation oil and I think that indicates the Chinese economy isn’t as sick as you might be reading in some of the more recent news reports. That’s a positive.”
Copper no longer “market darling” after ’24 tick down
“Copper was the market darling of 2023 then it’s been fairly flat. Projections have been pushed out for the supply squeeze to not happen in 2025. BHP said it thinks that’s going to be a 2026 story, but I don’t think it’s gone away.
“Maybe we’ll see it trace sideways, but we could see more price action in ’26.”
For further analysis on how commodities will move in 2025, watch the video above.
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