Ideas For The Week: Silver, Solar, & The Materials That Matter
12.04.26
Another volatile week in the books.
The war in Iran continues to reshape global energy markets at a pace that is almost impossible to keep up with but markets are slowly starting to look a lot more bullish again.
This environment remains very favourable to the stock pickers rather than index holders. YTD there’s been some incredible moves in many thematics (stablecoins, optics, semiconductor testing etc) whilst indexes have struggled to stay afloat.
Personally, I’m seeing the biggest opportunities in hardware, mining, and LatAm world right now whilst still remaining very long term bullish on a few AI application plays like LMND and ZETA, though the market currently isn’t rewarding those plays in 2026.
That’s why I’m starting to slowly increase my exposure to plays like copper, solar, and scandium which have some very nice momentum at the moment. If you want to see my exact stock portfolio, click this link:
Before we get into the ideas for the week, I just wanted to highlight the database I’m currently building which will be released to paid subs for beta testing in the next 48 hours with full release scheduled for May.
This is a fully functional web-app / database / research website all in one go. You also get:
Daily market commentary
My personal portfolio and watchlist
Weekly thematic commentary
New Ideas
Weekly Videos
All for just $24 a month (or $240 a year).
Lowest Risk: Silver
Most investors still think of silver as just another precious metal but that’s a massive underappreciation.
Silver has the highest electrical and thermal conductivity of any metal…by far. That makes it a critical one in the AI infrastructure buildout, especially as we shift from training to inference. The aim over the next few years will not just be to build the biggest models, but more importantly to run them efficiently and continuously.
This challenges the economics of the entire hardware cycle that we are in.
The objective now ultimately becomes a focus on lower cost per token and electrical and thermal efficiency. Silver sits within all of these hardware stacks like connectors, relays, packaging, thermal interface materials, and switching systems.
This makes silver heavily in demand in the agentic and physical AI world. More hardware equals more silver in systems where electrical loss and heat management matter enormously.
And then you need to add in the angles of:
Solar: The world just installed a record amount of solar capacity in 2025. Silver is the critical input in a photovoltaic cell.
Defence: Modern warfare is becoming more and more an electronics problem. Drones, sensors, ruggedized connectors etc. Silver is a critical metal in all of this.
Supply: Silver runs as a byproduct of lead, zinc, and copper so miners cannot just increase the supply of silver. We’ll likely run at a supply deficit for a while.
Considering all that…it’s hard not to be uber bullish on silver.
A higher risk way to play the silver trade is through SVM. Paid subs will know that I sold this last month for a +200% gain. I have not currently entered this one again, but it’s high on the watchlist.
Other potentials are Hecla Mining (HL), Pan American Silver Corp (PAAS), and Contango Silver & Gold (CTGO).
Medium Risk: Solar
I’m becoming very bullish on solar as nice way to play the next 2-3 years. Paid subs will know that I have recently started buying into TAN but it’s quite likely I’ll also add an individual stock quite soon to heighten the risk on this theme a bit.
Solar panel costs have now dropped 50% since 2022 and annual installations have nearly tripped. A solar panel built today generates electricity for 30 years with no fuel costs, no prices increases, and no supply risk.
The events of the last 6 weeks show you why this is so important.
From an individual stock pick point of view, my current options are:
