Monetary Matters with Jack Farley Sep 20, 2026 1h 12m 53m saved
With Jérémie Boyer, Co-Founder and Lead Research Analyst at Aurelion Research
Aurelion Research is carrying roughly a quarter to 30% of its model portfolio in commodities, and none of it through an ETF, an option or a futures contract. Every position is a listed company.
The consensus trade after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has been to own oil and own the fertilizer names alongside it. Jérémie Boyer is bearish on both, and his bullish money is in gold, copper and uranium instead.
"This is kind of easy, but maybe the safest one would be gold. I think like I don't see how it won't go back to like 5k USD an ounce."
Jérémie Boyer, Co-Founder and Lead Research Analyst at Aurelion Research, on Monetary Matters with Jack Farley, covers shipping, mining and energy for the firm, publishes its commodity price targets in public, and runs a model portfolio whose trades subscribers can see. He called the oil top above $110 in print and took the firm out of gold miners in January, before the drawdown.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 72 minutes of audio, 19 minutes of reading.
Here are the 9 calls that matter.
Key Takeaways
Gold at $5,000 an ounce is his highest-conviction call, and the trigger was gold breaking its inverse relationship with the oil price
China's central bank bought "66 tones out of 100" of global central-bank gold purchases in June, on Goldman Sachs data
Interest rates are worth about 30% of the gold story now, with geopolitics and central-bank buying carrying the rest
He is bearish oil into a war, because China has cut imports and inventories are rising even with the Strait of Hormuz shut
His ceiling: "we're not going maybe over 120"
A 40% winner in chemicals was sold on one customer conversation — construction buyers told him they would not absorb the price rises, and the stock fell about 40% after he left
Two ways to own uranium, deliberately: the largest producer, plus a company that buys and holds the physical metal
Copper's target is $7 a pound against a $6.50 spot price, and he says he would have written eight if it were not a Christmas target
A photonics company's investor contact volunteered that copper has further to run, which he reads as the theme reaching companies that have nothing to do with mining
He will not pay up for the obvious copper name, owning a $10B producer at 17 times earnings instead of a $200B one at 40
1. Gold to $5K an Ounce
Asked for his single highest-conviction view across the commodity complex, Boyer picked the one he calls the safest rather than the most exciting.
Gold is the call he is least worried about being wrong on
This is kind of easy, but maybe the safest one would be gold. I think like I don't see how it won't go back to like 5k USD an ounce.
Jérémie Boyer
The trigger was a change in how gold traded against oil. For most of the year the two moved inversely, with gold falling as oil rose, and the firm waited for that to break before turning bullish. It broke in July, and Aurelion published on it.
Flows then followed the price. Funds that were not in gold started getting calls from clients, he said, because "every day you have gold up 2% which never really happens," and mining stocks had run about 30% in a month.
China is buying two-thirds of what the world's central banks are buying
we also have China that is pretty important and we saw that they bought like six I think it's 66 tones out of 100 from all the global central bank like buying of gold.
Jérémie Boyer
That figure is June's, on Goldman Sachs data, and he noted the reporting lag: central-bank purchase data arrives months late, so the most recent month is never the one you can see.
2. Rates Are 30% of Gold
The host set out the textbook mechanism first: inflation expectations stuck near 2.5% while short-term rates were expected to rise means real interest rates rise, which is normally a headwind for gold. He added that India, usually one of the largest sources of investment demand, had slowed its buying and was asking its citizens to do the same.
Boyer's answer was that the textbook has stopped explaining most of the move.
Rates are part of the gold story, not the story
I don't always even look at the rates to check gold. Like it's important, it's part of the story, but maybe it's just like 30% of it.
Jérémie Boyer
What he checks instead is a list: whether China is in the market, whether there is a conflict running, and what the options market is doing — he pointed to a spike in Japanese demand for gold call options in July. Geopolitical fear, on his account, now moves the metal about as much as the Fed does.
He also refused to extend the call. The firm works on a six-month to one-year view, and anything past that he treats as forecasting rather than research.
The call stops at the end of this year
We see gold going higher this year and what happens in two years or after it's not something we're looking at as of now.
Jérémie Boyer
The host pressed on the longer structural driver anyway — the move out of Treasuries and into gold by central banks since the G7 froze Russian assets in 2022, which began under the Biden administration rather than the current one. Boyer did not take the bait, repeating that Aurelion is not in the prediction business and is willing to go neutral if the Strait reopens and the fear premium goes with it.
3. Long-Only, And Sized Small
The host put the model portfolio's record to him: up "over 38% year-to-date and over 130% since inception back in July of 2025." Boyer's answer was mostly about what the firm will not do to get returns like that.
No options, no ETFs, no metal — only companies
Usually we would have long only equities. So we don't do any options or ETFs.
Jérémie Boyer
The commodity weight is capped by design, on the reasoning that five commodities are five different trades rather than one position.
Commodities run at a quarter to 30% of the book, with a hard ceiling under half
usually we try to be below 50%. But we would have like 10% in shipping. We would have like 15 in mining.
Jérémie Boyer
Conviction and position size are separate decisions in his process, which is how the firm can be publicly bullish gold while owning almost none of it.
Being bullish is not the same as being long
we might be bullish but it doesn't mean we already have the position
Jérémie Boyer
Even at full conviction the gold weight would be small — "maybe it's more careful to have maybe five maybe 7% of the portfolio in gold miners," he said, because a 20% position assumes the view cannot change quickly, and his views do. The firm already has indirect exposure through a producer that is 60% copper and 40% gold.
He keeps a shortlist of about ten names ready to buy, including a US critical-minerals company he expects to add if tariffs on Canada escalate.
The names are picked before the catalyst arrives
it's kind of having cards that are ready to play and when it's time to play our cards, we just pull them out and we pull the trigger.
Jérémie Boyer
On timing, he owned gold miners into January, saw what he called obvious speculative excess in gold and silver, and sold. He is buying back now, late by his own admission, with miners already up about 40% off the year's lows.
He would rather leave the last of the return on the table
sometimes we even cut our winners some people would say too fast.
Jérémie Boyer
The reason he gave is that the final stretch of a position's return is the riskiest part of holding it, and that low volatility in the published index is one of the reasons subscribers stay.
4. The Case Against Oil
The bearish half of the outlook was oil and fertilizer. On fertilizer he described the position as a lack of confirmation rather than a strong view: he cannot be bearish oil and bullish fertilizer at the same time without contradicting himself, because the two are linked through petrochemical inputs.
Oil is where the conviction is, and the argument is China.
He called the top above $110 by arguing everyone had forgotten China
oil they went to like above 110 and everything and we were maybe one of the only where we were very vocal about like it's getting too high there's too much noise And it seems like everyone is forgetting about China.
Jérémie Boyer
The pushback he got at the time was that demand destruction only happens at much higher prices. His answer is that a large buyer simply importing less does the same job.
Demand destruction has more than one shape
I'm not stupid. I know that it only happens at 150 and above.
Jérémie Boyer
China has kept importing less, he said, substituting coal and running down its own reserves, while Chinese consumer spending stays weak. He also disputed the tanker-tracking evidence the oil bulls use: inventories are rising, which cannot be squared with the claim that very little oil is moving, so more crude is in transit than the visible data shows — a dark fleet, undeclared pipeline capacity, or both.
Asked what would change his mind, he named an escalation he does not expect: American troops on the ground in Iran, with US casualties. Missiles hitting energy infrastructure rather than bases would probably do it too, he said, because that damage takes a long time to repair.
There is a ceiling on this, and it is below the levels the bulls are naming
so I don't say that it can't go to 100 I mean we are close. But what I think is we're not going maybe over 120.
Jérémie Boyer
$110 is possible; he just will not underwrite it
For sure. If there's something that happen, they hit 10 tankers tomorrow. I'm not like a predictor. I don't know.
Jérémie Boyer
5. Chemicals And Refiners
The clearest worked example of his process was a chemicals trade he got right twice. Aurelion was bullish chemicals because petrochemical feedstocks move with oil, owned Huntsman, and was up about 40% as the company raised prices into the disruption.
Then he called the customers. Construction buyers told him they could not absorb another price rise. He sold, and the stock fell roughly 40% afterward.
He is not paid to bet on what might happen
and like you said if it's all about speculation why would you be bullish? It's like betting on a big AI IPO that might happen.
Jérémie Boyer
The same discipline cost him the refining trade, which has been one of the strongest of the year with crack spreads near 10-year highs. He owns none of it.
He missed the refiners and says so
Maybe we miss this trade. It happens we don't win them all.
Jérémie Boyer
A bearish view on the commodity, he added, does not rule out owning the companies attached to it, because a producer's economics turn on its break-even price rather than on the direction of the spot price.
Bearish oil, still open to an oil business
when I say that we are bearish on oil, it doesn't mean that I'm not bullish on maybe a oil royalty company in Texas
Jérémie Boyer
Two limits on the refining margin came up. Buyers eventually push back on price, the same mechanism that ended the chemicals trade, and there is political pressure — he pointed to Trump publicly calling on Chevron and Exxon to cut prices, something he said is not part of the Canadian experience.
6. Why He Owns Royalties
Asked whether he prefers royalty businesses to producers, Boyer walked through the one he owns: LandBridge, a Texas land and royalty company that leases drilling and water rights, and is increasingly signing land deals with data-center developers.
A 30-person company with a gross margin near the whole revenue line
It's like 99% or 97% gross margin. So it's really crazy margin. So I think usually royalties are amazing business.
Jérémie Boyer
He named Topaz Energy in Canada as the same model in oil, and described the structure's appeal plainly: the owner buys land, collects on what is produced from it, and leaves the operating risk with the operator. The host pushed back on the durability of that, pointing out that a royalty company faces the same asset-depletion problem a major does, and has to keep buying land at the right point in the cycle to replace what runs down.
The valuation objection is the harder one, and Boyer's answer was an argument he had already had with his own partner.
The multiple only looks absurd next to the wrong comparison
I'm trying to pitch to a non commodity guy which is my partner Leo. Okay, I think there's a lot of upside in a company that is trading at 40 times PE with amazing margins, but free cash flow is fine. And he's like, are you out of your mind or anything? And I'm like, okay, but it used to trade at like 60 time earning. And he's like, 60 time? Is it a AI company? And I'm like, no. It's royalties companies.
Jérémie Boyer
His method is to compare a company against its own history and its closest peer rather than against the market. LandBridge was bought around 20 to 25 times earnings against a 35-times history, while Texas Pacific Land trades near 50. The firm sets a one-, three- and five-year price target off a chosen multiple rather than a discounted cash-flow model, on the argument that funds think in multiples and the share price moves to the multiple the marginal buyer will pay.
Every position gets a target and a reason to leave
And usually something we do, we always have a price target. Usually we do a one year.
Jérémie Boyer
He flagged one structural risk in the group, which is who owns the shares.
Concentrated private-equity ownership cuts both ways
But it's kind of something maybe before I forget that could be risky with royalties like this. They tend to have a big private equity ownership.
Jérémie Boyer
A holder that large will not exit in a week, he said, but nobody outside knows the plan — and management often does not either. The compensation is that a small free float makes the stock less volatile.
7. Uranium's Build Pipeline
Uranium has been a story for a decade and has run in bursts, so the host asked what is different now. Boyer started by dismissing the permanently bullish accounts on X — they buy every day, never sell, and are not information.
The case he does make is a construction backlog that predates the AI build-out.
The reactor pipeline is a contracted demand curve, not a forecast
you can see that China will build 70 central control in the next 10 years. France five, UK seven, India a lot.
Jérémie Boyer
A government that builds a reactor has to fuel it or waste the capital, which is why he treats the pipeline as demand rather than intent. The host raised the standard objection: fuel is a small share of a reactor's operating cost, so operators are not price-sensitive and the long-term contracts at higher prices have not appeared.
Boyer's answer was that price sensitivity is not the mechanism — supply is. Each five-year supply contract signed at a higher price resets the spot reference for the next buyer, and there are far more buyers coming to the same small set of mines.
He owns the two sides of the market separately
in our portfolio we have one of the biggest producer of uranium and we have one company that is a physical buying and holding company of uranium. So this one only moves on physical price.
Jérémie Boyer
One position tracks the physical metal and the other is exposed to speculative pricing, which he described as a deliberate way to be less wrong. Aurelion published a uranium primer about two months ago, saw the price fall after, and then watched it run.
The bear case is that nobody builds what they promised
I think that it's a really long-term story and something that will be hard to go wrong
Jérémie Boyer
He named the real risk as countries quietly shelving reactor plans — South Korea promising ten and building one, with coal filling the gap. Europe, he argued, cannot make that substitution.
Europe has no way out of nuclear and into coal
So they kind of stuck with uranium which is beautiful in some way for uranium investor.
Jérémie Boyer
He also made the operating point that a reactor is not a plant you switch on and off, so utilities have to secure fuel ahead of need, and said Germany's closure of working reactors looks like a mistake its successors are now trying to reverse.
8. Copper's $7 Target
Copper is where his complaint about supply-demand analysis lands. The deficits the forecasters publish usually arrive in ten years, and he is not paid to wait ten years.
The copper shortage is a present-tense problem
what's interesting it's a story that is playing out right now like we need more copper right now not just in five years
Jérémie Boyer
He also noted that copper has stopped trading with the other metals and no longer tracks gold, which he attributes to AI demand pulling it away from the rest of the complex. The risk he named is attention: the market has moved on to memory and GPUs and talks about data centers less than it did, and copper's demand story is the data centers.
The target is $7 against a $6.50 spot, and it is deliberately conservative
even my our copper forecast right now the price is like 6.5 USD. Our price target is seven. I could have put eight, but it's for Christmas target. So, I try to be conservative
Jérémie Boyer
The evidence he finds most convincing came from outside the mining industry. On a call with a large photonics company, he asked whether copper supply was a risk to the business, and the investor-relations contact told him the metal had further to go.
A photonics supplier's own view of copper is that it goes higher
she came out with like yeah I think copper has a lot of more room to go to the upside
Jérémie Boyer
Companies do not raise a cost risk with investors unless it is real, he said, which is why the exchange persuaded him more than another supply-deficit chart.
On how to own it, he is against the default. The host observed that institutions reaching for copper buy Freeport-McMoRan, which is part of why it trades near a 36 PE for a major producer. Boyer owns something smaller: a producer with copper, gold and zinc output across Peru, the US and Canada, which has just come out of a heavy capital-spending period.
He is buying the phase after the capex, not the growth story
I call it the earning phase.
Jérémie Boyer
Assets bought years ago are now producing, the capital spending is falling quarter by quarter, and the free cash flow arrives as the copper price rises. The valuation gap is the rest of the argument.
A $10B producer at 17 times earnings against a $200B one at 40
Mine is trading at like 17 PE. I'm like, okay, it's a 10 billion company that I choose. The other is like, okay, it's like 200 billion, right? So, it's really crowded.
Jérémie Boyer
He checks 13F filings on the Bloomberg terminal to see what the large funds own, and found D.E. Shaw holding about $50 million of his copper name — small for that firm, but a signal.
A large fund in a small name is a second opinion
If there's a really smart PM that decide I want this company instead of like a bigger one at a big place like this, maybe know something that I don't know or he just thinks the same thing than me and it's a good confirmation usually.
Jérémie Boyer
Both he and the host then listed the limits of reading a 13F: a multi-strategy fund may be running the position against a short in Freeport or Southern Copper, may hold foreign-listed copper producers that never appear in the filing, and may have exited already.
9. The Five Calls, Summed Up
Asked to close with the whole book, Boyer ran the five in order. Gold stays the strongest, on the decoupling from oil plus ETF, fund and Chinese central-bank buying of physical metal. Copper he framed as a good story made better by AI, with producers now finishing their capital programs and moving into cash generation — and with 10 to 15 years between a decision to build a copper mine and the metal coming out of it.
Uranium is a 20-year story that may finally have its moment
Uranium it's up and down, but we think maybe this time could be the right one.
Jérémie Boyer
On oil he restated the bearish view as a discipline rather than a forecast.
He would rather be bearish than hope for a catastrophe
it's all about not being maybe a perma bearish or perma bull and we think that right now it's easier to be bearish than always wishing for being bullish
Jérémie Boyer
He added that he is not rooting for disruption: a reopened Strait and cheaper gasoline is the outcome he expects and the one he thinks is better for everyone.
Fertilizer is the least settled of the five. Potash, nitrogen and phosphate behave differently, and US farmers are loud about input costs, but the data does not support the complaint.
Fertilizer is affordable, whatever the farm lobby says
when we look at real data and everything we can see that is pretty affordable right now
Jérémie Boyer
Even a strong El Niño, which the conversation had not otherwise touched, does not change that for now, though he allowed the view could turn within six months.
Bonus Insights
The host is a LandBridge holder and said so
The disclosure came up twice in the royalty discussion: the host owns Texas Pacific Land and has discussed LandBridge on the show before.
Texas Pacific Land as a cult stock
Boyer called TPL "a bit of a cult," and the host told a story about a holder who attends the annual meetings — whose wife calls him and his friends the "Texas Pacific losers," because they are rich and cannot stop talking about the stock.
The uranium name that trades on a Musk tweet
His example of how retail exposure gets chosen: people who turn bullish on a commodity buy the first ticker they find, which is how a uranium tracker becomes the vehicle for a view about reactors.
Both firms in the conversation publish in the open
Aurelion's commodity report is free to read on its Substack, and Boyer's partner, Léo-Pierre Trudel, is the firm's other co-founder and covers industrials, healthcare, consumer and technology.
Boyer's bottom line is that the commodity trade has split in two: gold, copper and uranium have a shortage arriving now and are worth owning through producers whose capital spending is already behind them, while oil and fertilizer are priced for a war premium that the physical data has already started to leak away.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Aurelion Research (Boyer's firm. Publishes commodity price targets and runs a model portfolio of long-only equities, with commodities at a quarter to 30% of the book)
LandBridge (The Texas land and royalty company he owns: about 30 employees, gross margins he puts at 97–99%, and data-center land deals on top of the oil and water rights)
Texas Pacific Land (The comparison he values LandBridge against, trading near 50 times earnings; he called it "a bit of a cult")
Topaz Energy (The Canadian oil royalty company he named as the same business model)
Huntsman (The chemicals position he was up about 40% on and sold after construction customers said they would not accept further price rises; it fell roughly 40% after)
Freeport-McMoRan (The default institutional copper holding he will not buy, on a 36 PE for a major producer)
Southern Copper (The $200B, 40-times-earnings producer he compares his own $10B, 17-times copper holding against)
Lumentum (The photonics company whose investor contact told him copper has more room to the upside — evidence the cost risk has reached firms outside mining)
D.E. Shaw (Holds about $50M of his copper name, which he treats as confirmation rather than a reason to buy)
Goldman Sachs (Source of the central-bank gold purchase data he cited for June)
Chevron and ExxonMobil (Named as targets of public pressure from Trump to bring prices down, which he counts as a cap on refining economics)
Books & Resources Mentioned
The Next Commodity Winners (The free Aurelion report this interview works through: bullish gold, copper and uranium, bearish oil and fertilizer, with the price targets attached)
The Aurelion Research Index (The published model portfolio whose positions and weights he discusses throughout)
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