Lithium, Copper, Aluminum, Steel: The New Gold? These Commodities Are Matching Its 2025 Rally

Forget the old safe haven. A new breed of industrial metals is stealing gold's thunder.

The Unlikely Contenders

While investors traditionally flock to the yellow metal during uncertainty, a different story is unfolding this year. Lithium, copper, aluminum, and steel aren't just holding their ground—they're performing just as well. Their surge isn't driven by fear, but by the cold, hard logic of global transformation.

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This isn't speculative froth. Lithium fuels the EV revolution. Copper wires the digital and green energy future. Aluminum and steel form the backbone of modern infrastructure and manufacturing. Their value is tied to tangible, accelerating macro trends, not just sentiment.

A Portfolio Reality Check

The parallel performance throws a wrench into conventional asset allocation models. It suggests that 'real world' industrial assets can offer comparable, if not more fundamentally grounded, defensive characteristics in certain market environments. Diversification just got more metallic.

Gold's luster remains, but it's no longer the only shiny object in the room. The rise of these industrial pillars highlights a market rewarding assets with utility over pure tradition—a subtle jab at finance's often nostalgic relationship with 'safe' stores of value. Sometimes, the future is built, not just hoarded.

Demand from AI and clean energy pushes industrial metals up

Year-to-date, copper has rallied by more than 34%, steel gained 27%, while aluminum added 14%, and lithium surged by 30%.

Every tech-driven industry seemed to rely on a blend of these metals, and that kept prices on a steady upward grind.

Sadly though, supply problems hit the copper market harder than anything else. In May, flooding at Ivanhoe’s Kamoa-Kakula operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo shut down one of the biggest copper mines on earth.

A few months later, a tunnel collapse in Chile damaged another major mine, then a mudslide hit Freeport-McMoRan’s Grasberg mine in Indonesia, cutting even more supply.

Lithium traders also felt pressure when the Chinese government temporarily halted operations at one of CATL’s major mining sites. Prices reacted fast.

Aluminum and steel producers ran into their own issues as energy prices climbed because of the Ukraine war and AI’s heavy electricity needs. ING Bank said China was nearing its aluminum cap, which limited how much extra supply the country could push into the market.

Wiederhold said, “When there’s geopolitical risk cropping up, or something with a government doing export bans to try and raise prices, this is a direct beneficiary of price appreciation.”

Tariffs and supply fears add new volatility as producers respond

The White House added more fuel when President Donald TRUMP approved 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. The same tariff hit copper-intensive goods like wiring and tubes, though raw copper ore was not included.

When Trump first announced the tariff plan in July, traders rushed to pull physical copper out of overseas warehouses and move it into the U.S. before the duties took effect. Prices spiked immediately. Once the administration clarified that raw ore WOULD remain exempt, copper prices cooled off.

Even with that correction, supply anxiety didn’t go anywhere.LPL Financial chief technical strategist Adam Turnquist said rising requests to remove copper from LME warehouses “exacerbated fears over a global supply shortage.”

Metal traders reacted quickly. Glencore, one of the biggest commodity firms worldwide, is preparing to lift its copper production from 850 kilotons in 2025 to 1,000 kt in 2028 and 1,600 kt by 2035, based on research from Jefferies. In Southeast Asia, Indonesian aluminum smelters began expanding refining capacity to catch rising demand.

Jigna Gibb, head of commodities and crypto index products at Bloomberg, said trading desks are increasing their physical positions because “energy and industrial metals are the key ones where you see a lot more positioning.”

All of this connected back to AI’s booming electricity appetite. Aluminum refiners need cheap energy, and rising AI power use is already cutting into their margins and raising operating costs. New grid expansions, more data centers, and wiring inside AI chips continue to lift demand for copper and steel.

Lithium stayed tight because of China’s control over much of global supply. EVs, energy storage systems, and other parts of the energy transition kept pulling lithium into long-term contracts. Wiederhold said the world is increasingly “powered by technologies consisting of metals,” adding, “We’re just not going to have enough supply for the projected demand.”

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