“This Time Is Different?” Not So Fast
How to Build Life-Changing Returns in the Commodity Supercycle
Two years ago I would not shut up about gold.
Every morning in 2023 the message was the same: “Watch that breakout in gold.”
I kept repeating it because the setup fit the environment. The yield curve was inverted. Confidence in the economy was shaky. Money was bleeding out of bonds. That cocktail tends to push capital toward real assets and the miners that pull them from the ground. It wasn’t a prediction. It was an alignment of conditions and price.
Now, two years later, people ask a new question: “Will this ever stop?”
Everything ends—every trend, every cycle—but the timing is like musical chairs. Who the hell knows when the music stops? The harder truth: the best move near the top of a strong trend is often the one nobody wants—do nothing. Hold the leaders as long as they’re still leading.
This is where behavioral economics collides with markets. We prefer action over patience (action bias). We anchor to old prices and think “it’s up too much” (anchoring). We fear giving back gains more than we value compounding (loss aversion). We want a fresh pick even when the existing winners are working (novelty bias). And the biggest one in bull runs: recency bias—we assume what just happened will continue forever or that what just happened is “too much” and must reverse now. Both tempt us to outsmart a trend.
Gold and the miners have been a live lesson in fighting those impulses.
Letting Winners Be Winners
I hear this a lot right now: “What’s the best gold miner to hold?”
Most of the time the real answer is simple: the ones you already own that are trending higher. You don’t need a new hero after a 100%–1000% move in a couple of years. You need rules that allow compounding.
Here’s why the question feels urgent. Picture a position that started as 5% of your portfolio. It doubles. Now it’s ~10% without you touching a thing. Repeat that across ten names that rise together and your winners drive most of your equity curve. That’s not a “problem” to solve; that’s what you wanted at the start. Yes, you still have risk limits. You can trim (I don’t) if a single name balloons past your max. But the default for leaders in strong trends is hold them. The disposition effect—our tendency to sell winners and keep losers—kills more accounts than any bad stock pick.
What the Charts Say
You’ll see three charts in this note. Let me walk through them in plain language and then tie them together.
1) Year-to-Date Performance (the green and red bars)
Think of this like a race. Each bar is a runner—gold, silver, platinum, hogs, coffee, bonds, the dollar, and so on.
Green bars to the right are winners—they ran far this year.
Red bars to the right are losers—they ran the wrong way.
What jumps off the page: metals sit at the top. Platinum, silver, gold, palladium—this is a hard-asset tape. Energy is mixed in the one-year look: crude flat to down, gasoline softer, natural gas lower, while the energy stocks are positive but not screaming. That tells us leadership has been miners and metals first, not fuels. The race isn’t over, but we know who’s in front.
2) 2025 YTD Commodity Sector Returns (the squiggly lines)
Now imagine a footrace filmed from January to today. Each colored line is a team:
GDX (gold miners) is the line that takes off and never looks back. It’s up the most.
XME (broad metals & mining) and COPX (copper miners) run behind GDX but still sprint.
URNM (uranium miners) keeps pace with a strong climb of its own.
LIT (lithium) lags early, then improves—more uneven but pointed up.
SLX (steel) grinds higher.
SPY (the S&P 500) is in the middle of the pack—nice, but not the alpha seat.
XLE (energy stocks) is positive, yet it hugs the bottom of the leaders. It hasn’t made it’s move—yet.
The simple takeaway: miners lead. Energy hasn’t joined the party in size, but it hasn’t broken either. In a broad commodity bull, lagging sectors often catch up once the tape proves the move is real.
3) XLE vs. TLT (the seesaw chart)
This one is an intermarket X-ray. Two lines: