By Doug Casey
International Man
September 11, 2026
International Man: Investors tend to chase whatever is most fashionable at the moment. Where do you see important investment opportunities developing today that most people are overlooking because they aren't exciting or widely discussed yet?
Doug Casey: I've specialized in resource stocks for most of my investing life. They've treated me very well, although they're highly cyclical and ultra-volatile. In the roughly five great resource bull markets starting in 1971, the average gold stock went up 10-1. Some went up 100-1. And, purely by accident, I owned one that rose 1000-1. I'm not talking about in the course of a lifetime, but in about five years.
Then, when a bear market inevitably hits, most collapse at least 90%, with many going to zero-or close to it. Few legitimate investors even acknowledge their existence because their market caps are so small. Most aren't even microcaps. They're nanocaps. Some are picocaps. Because resource stocks are so small and so volatile, few pay attention to them, despite the fact that gold has risen more than a hundred times over the last 50 years.
What's interesting this time around is that the companies producing the raw materials of civilization don't adequately reflect the values of their products. As we speak, both mining and energy stocks are at about the cheapest levels in history relative to other sectors. The public is totally uninterested in them. Their attention is focused entirely on the tech stocks.
Resource stocks have done pretty well over the last couple of years. But the bull market is just beginning. I think we have several years to go, and it's going to be breathtaking. That's where you should be.
International Man: A huge amount of money is going into new infrastructure, manufacturing, power generation, data centers, and electrification. Rather than betting on the headline companies, are there "picks and shovels" businesses or industries that stand to benefit regardless of which technologies or companies ultimately win?
Doug Casey: You're referring to the AI boom, of course. AI stocks have had a spectacular boom, adding trillions of dollars of market value.
The public has become aware of this and, as they always do, are piling in only after the big money has already been made. More experienced investors are looking for less expensive ways to participate, things that haven't already moved-indirect plays that make "picks and shovels" to build AI facilities. Good idea, but they're late to the party. Unfortunately, nothing that's AI-adjacent is cheap anymore. The whole area is dangerous.
AI is certainly one of the greatest advances ever in technology. I'm a fan. But the trillions spent on data centers are questionable, at best. All that money flowing into one area at once is resulting in huge misallocations of capital and outright waste on a historic scale. It's a mania that will result in immense overbuilding. I can't see how there can be any reasonable return on the trillions of dollars going into this area.
Worse, it seems very little of the data centers are being used for research in science, technology, engineering, math, medicine, and the like. They're not making advances in biology or nuclear physics. They're mostly just gathering data about people-who they are, where they are, what they're thinking, saying, and doing. Sure, that data can result in short-term profits. But the profits are from manipulating people, not creating things in the physical world.
I believe that what's going on will not only be grossly uneconomic, but will wind up compromising personal freedom in many ways. Data centers enable you to be monitored 24/7. No wonder there's a groundswell of fear and hate surrounding them from the average citizen.
It's no longer early days for investing in AI and data centers. And that goes for the "picks and shovels" plays catering to them. The public are latecomers to this game. At this stage, the only way to win this game is not to play.
International Man: Copper seems to sit at the intersection of several major trends-electrification, power grids, construction, manufacturing, and data centers-while new supply remains difficult and expensive to develop. How bullish are you on copper, and where do you think the best opportunities for investors might be?
Doug Casey: We've all heard the meme: More copper needs to be mined in the next decade than has been mined in all of history so far. Meanwhile, old copper mines are depleting, and there have been few major discoveries over the past few decades. And if you make a discovery, it takes a billion dollars in drilling to prove it up. Then another decade, and billions more in capital to get it permitted, in the hope of producing it. So the price of copper should go much higher.
I own a number of copper stocks. They've done fine. But copper-like iron, nickel, and other base metals-is a highly capital-intensive business. I'm much more interested in gold and silver because they're monetary metals. As long as we have paper money, fiat currency, and bankrupt governments, the demand for gold and silver will only strengthen.
On the other hand, there are lots of reasons why the bull case for copper could collapse. Not least is the current mania for data centers, which will require megatons of the metal-assuming they're built and used the way everyone thinks.
I'm not a bear on copper. It's just that copper usage, because it's a high-tech metal, should only increase at slightly more than the growth rate in the economy as a whole. The demand from data centers is causing a distortion in the market. Is it crazy to say that at some point soon all the copper going into data centers will be torn out, to become a huge source of copper supply ? I think it's a real possibility. Stranger things have happened.
International Man: For years, investors favored businesses that required little physical capital. But we may now be entering a period where the world needs massive investment in mines, energy, power infrastructure, factories, and transportation. Could that shift create a new bull market in the old economy-and where would you look for the biggest mispricings?
Doug Casey: The big advantage of investing in tech stocks is that innovators can build fortunes in their living room with a laptop. Or in the garage with limited materials. The public is quite aware of that. No wonder everybody wants to get involved in a startup today.
That leads me to another point about these giant data centers, some of them covering square miles. The whole history of tech has been towards things that are smaller, cheaper, and less centralized. The current mania runs totally counter to that. Data centers are gigantic, ultra-expensive, and super concentrated. Has the trend of high tech reversed 180 degrees ? Maybe, as they say, "This time is different!"
In other words, I'm willing to bet that the future of AI will be local, dispersed, and smaller. The giant data centers, which are currently all the rage, may well be analogous to dinosaurs or pyramids...
The resource business, on the other hand, has always been highly capital intensive. That's one of the reasons why it's usually a terrible place to put your money. Who wants to play around in the dirt with big yellow machines when you can make a lot more money much more quickly by moving some digits around on the internet?
Markets are cyclical. Few people, for instance, remember that back in the early 1980s, oil stocks alone were about 20% of the S&P. Now they're about 4%. But the raw materials of civilization are just as important as ever. That's where you should be.
International Man: When you look beyond the obvious investment themes today, what scarce resources, neglected industries, or capital-intensive businesses do you think could surprise investors with much greater upside over the next several years?
Doug Casey: The important thing is to remember that we're at the top of the greatest inflationary super bubble in all of history.
The world has made great advances in science, technology, and engineering, especially in the areas of computing and artificial intelligence. These things have increased the average person's standard of living immensely. They've supercharged a trend that's been underway for about 10,000 years. We're probably on the cusp of Ray Kurzweil's Singularity. There are plenty of reasons for optimism.
But much of the recent increase in the standard of living has been because of consumer debt, which includes almost all government debt. Consumer debt dissipates the capital that's been saved by past generations, while it mortgages the future of those yet unborn.
There are many reasons-which we've discussed in the past-why we're on the precipice of what I call the Greater Depression. Consumer debt is one of them.
There's not much you can do to change the course of civilization or the primary trend of the markets. But it is possible to insulate yourself, and even profit from some scary things that are looming. It's why I suggest readers look at the suggestions we make in Contrarian Insider and at Crisis Investing.
Reprinted with permission from International Man.