I don't know what you want me to do with these. If you wanted me to comment on these articles, then maybe you should have used them for the post rather than an AI generated summary of a statement made by Deutsche Bank. As things are, I couldn't really care less which way copper goes in because I'm not invested in (nor interested in investing in) it.

It's all speculative anyway, and anyone claiming to know the magic sauce of which way the market will go is either a conman or a fool. At the end of the day, everything is a bet, and all it takes is for Trump to stub his toe and declare more random tariffs, start another blockade, or overthrow another government before the market flips over itself again.

I won't give financial advice, but I'll quote advice I've been given. Diversify your investments.

https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news/metals/010826-copper-supply-gap-to-widen-24-by-2040-as-electrification-accelerates-study

https://www.miningvisuals.com/post/copper-market-balance-a-look-at-2026-deficit-forecasts

https://www.cruxinvestor.com/posts/copper-supply-constraints-a-70-demand-coverage-gap-drive-interest-in-deliverable-projects

https://rmis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/rmp/Copper

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor.

This pretty much sums up the article. Deutsche Bank is BSing a claim to hike the price of copper. It'll probably rise anyway, but there's no reason to believe any of the numbers are accurate, and the market is far too volatile right now to say that any bets are safe.

I'm not your financial advisor.

I've got bins of copper and brass left over from work. Should probably take it to the scrapyard some day.

so, go long BHP.ax or a synthetic like KCOP.bats?

It's Merkel's fault.

Ironically, this is the "sell the shovel" situation from the gold rush, but in Gold's favor this time. Chip rush!

Yes, old electronics indeed has a lot of different metals.

Everything in chip making needs gold...good wires to connect chips. Cold coatings to reflect this or that or prevent reactions with a gas etc. yet some idiot wears enough gold to make thousands if not millions of chips. Also people just throw away the old computer full of germanium, gold, platinum etc. there should be recycling procedures for these things.

Fwiw, I think the market will be in trouble when the AI industry contracts (and I believe that it will based on the lunatic numbers involved, but see Ed Zitron's reporting for info about that). There are safer places to invest and we had our financial planner move to those markets due to my skepticism.

Ask an LLM which markets suffered the least when the sub-prime housing crisis and resulting recession of 2008/2009 happened. Don't trust an LLM for financial advice, obviously. But they're less likely to hallucinate about something that's a massive part of the training data and many of the articles written during that time period are in it. I think you can safely get a broad sense of which investments might be a safe bet if you believe the AI industry will have a negative impact in the future.

Good for you for choosing to start early / young. It'll make a big difference long term.

I am not an expert, so this is just my understanding and view from limited personal interest and activities.

It's typically said to invest what you can let sit for 10 years because that reduces risk through the assumption that downfalls will recover and gain long term. Stock market, including ETFs, do have a risk attached. A broad financial crisis can crash the stock market in broad ways. And we may be right before a crash. It remains to be seen how other markets, the US market in particular, will influence the EU stock market and economy. The EZB has already warned publicly about the situation (AI company overvaluation IIRC).

You will have to decide how much trust you want to put into the long term / 10 year market always rises / neutralizes inflation. When you look at the past, it's generally true, at least.

You can also question the stability of all monetary systems we depend on, which is even more frightening, tbh.

ETFs track multiple stocks, and consequently spread risk. The broader the spread, the less risk, supposedly, and the less chance of outlier gains.

You can play around with stock, maybe companies you want to support, but if your goal is investment and gain, and you want to go stock market, your best bet is broad ETFs. If you go for fractions of shares, that's fine in general. Just beware that neobanking can mean the bank you interact with is not the one holding the money. It's other banks. The US recently had a case where people did not get their money back after their bank defaulted, not sure about the specifics, and I certainly hope it'd be better in EU either way.

Of course, broad ETFs include companies you may not like, given what you wrote.

Buying government debt is an alternative. You should use stable enough countries, though.

The current interest given by the EZB is also quite good and can neutralize inflation, if you want to go that route instead. Unfortunately, most banks don't pass them on for held money. Trade Republic does.

Fixed time and interest is not worth it currently, given the high general interest rate if make use of it.

You're in better shape than you realize if you're starting with nothing. A lot of people start with a ton of debt that they need to handle first. If you do happen to have debt, understand that what you owe on the debt will grow faster than any investment you as a regular individual could possibly make.

The author is a little gimmicky but his advice is legit. For example, he claims his "Conscious Spending Plan" isn't a budget - it's a budget. He knows his stuff, though, even though he does all the usual influencer things of trying to sell courses, etc.

Very gimmicky title for a book. Is it for real?

Keep it simple.

Finally, this is a general tip, but important. Once you have your passive investment system setup, it’s best not to touch it, or watch it constantly, and just to let market efficiency do its thing over time. Never panic buy. Never panic sell. Never try to time the market. That is gambling, and you will lose those bets more often than you win.

Spend time reading resources and learning, like others suggest. But based on my observations, the current market, at least here in the US, is extraordinarily volatile. It may be worth waiting to invest larger amounts of money into potentially volatile investments like most tech stock for the time being (there are less volatile, lower yield investments out there that you can look into).

Since you're just starting, start small. Trade only amounts you're willing to lose. Once you get more confident, then invest what you want.

I believe it would be a mistake to just give you a few recommendations, from my personal opinion, here in this post.

Conversely, I believe it would be my responsibility to point you in the correct direction. Fortunately, I have a friend who has a masters degree in finance and he is, also, a Certified Public Accountant.

Many years ago I read I Will Teach You to Be Rich: No Guilt. No Excuses. Just a 6-Week Program That Works. I asked my aforementioned friend about it and he confirmed that it was very solid information and advice.

Thus, I would highly recommend that you read that book and implement everything in it. My wife and I have as well as my brother and we have hundreds of thousands of dollars that will soon turn into millions. I can't recommend this book enough.

Also I want to say that I don't really want to buy from "the big ones" like Amazon or Microsoft for a deep personal hatred towards certain megacorps

Oh, I thought you meant lesser evil than Capital One.

Exactly. Most local banks outsource to bigger evil corps (visa and m/c) for the network. American Express is smaller but it’s a hard-right corp ethically worse than visa and m/c.

A long time ago there was a scarce handful of small banks (like <10 nationwide) who used the Discover/Diner's club network but that has shrunk to like 1 or 2 banks IIRC.

isn't that just visa and mastercard. they always worked through banks.

Most local banks offer their own cards. The service is often a lot better than that from the big corporations.

Cash is very much still a thing for Germany.

Indeed Germany is a cash strong-hold. But the German system is fragile. When cash is refused by a German company, the enforcement authorities are looking the other way. There is also no German ombudsman to appeal to, so without accountability enforcement agencies have no incentive to act. The only thing currently enabling cash to persist in Germany is the capitalistic drive to serve customers who like cash -- which is almost sufficient today but it’s a downward trend worldwide. So cash will die in Germany as soon as a large enough portion of consumers quit caring. I think the tipping point is not far off. It’s just a matter of a few elderly folks dying off.

Many online stores allow you to do bank transfers to pay for products.

Okay, but Discovercard is a US institution with very little acceptance outside the US. Americans never have a bank transfer option for online purchases. Most Americans don’t even have an IBAN. Only 7 banks in the US have an IBAN themselves (out of ~2000 banks). So of the ~1993 or so banks some get an agreement with one of the 7 banks to borrow their SWIFT access. It’s quite messy and the fees are absurd. Because the money goes via 3rd party, the comment field is used for critical information about the ultimate beneficiary.

Cash is very much still a thing for Germany.

Many online stores allow you to do bank transfers to pay for products.