Daniel Ghali, head of metals research at Deutsche Bank, told BNN Bloomberg that gold looks underowned and resilient, silver now faces a very different physical backdrop, and copper sits in what he calls the scarcest environment on record.

In Ghali’s reading, low gold positioning plus rising official and institutional demand set up a constructive case into next year, while silver’s inventory rebuild and demand destruction point to underperformance, and dual U.S.-China copper stockpiling could drive outsized price moves.

Kitco News reported the interview comments, which split the three metals into distinct regimes rather than one shared bullish tape.

That split matters for capital preservation. Gold is being framed as a monetary diversifier. Silver is being framed as a market that just swung from extreme scarcity toward surplus risk. Copper is being framed as a structural tightness story. Treating them as interchangeable would miss the setup Ghali described.

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Gold’s limited pullback under pressure

Ghali argued the recent gold pullback has been smaller than the macro headwinds would suggest.

He pointed to a tougher rate and energy backdrop and still saw price action that refused to break lower in a decisive way.

“Gold markets have faced a strikingly different outlook for the Fed. US 10-year yields have rocketed north of 5%. Crude oil is trading north of $100 a barrel. And yet, gold prices still haven’t managed to print a new low since July. That’s a really strong, resilient price action in my book.”

In his view, the tape “screams echoes of 2022.” Positioning looks deeply cautious. He described the current setup as probably the most bearish since October 2021. Yet he said the regime around that positioning has changed.

Official sector purchases, he said, are running at more than double the earlier clip. The network of institutional investors participating in gold has probably grown by roughly 70% since 2021. Reserve pools available for allocation have expanded as well. Over recent months, he added, the case for higher allocations itself has grown.

That combination helps explain why a crowded sideline can coexist with resilient prices. It also sits near the same timing debate visible in our coverage of Deutsche Bank’s $4,700 gold fair value work and the idea that a larger phase may still be unfinished.

Why discretionary money stayed out

Ghali did not pretend every holder has been convinced. He said weak performance around the war in Iran shocked some participants and kept them on the sidelines.

His forward case rests on that hesitation. Positioning is low. Gold looks oversold. It looks underowned. Looking into next year, he called that a strong setup and “a really great time for gold.”

He also rejected a false choice between bonds and bullion.

“I think what’s happening now, and this is really what the market is missing, is that the bear market in treasuries is actually fueling part of the need for institutional investors to diversify. If you think back at what happened at some of the large institutional investors across the globe, namely pension funds, endowments, trusts, insurance companies, their allocations to alternative assets have grown dramatically over the last 20 years. But the types of alternative assets that they piled into have retained a yield sensitivity, and in this case, the bear market in treasuries is actually fueling more diversification in gold within that alternatives mix.”

In plain terms: many “alternatives” still move with rates. When Treasuries endure a bear market, some of that search for ballast can migrate into gold. That is a plumbing argument about portfolio construction, not a slogan about money printing.

Readers watching whether buyers finally leave the sidelines will recognize a similar tension in our note on gold closing in on its strongest month in years, where momentum and hesitation can coexist for longer than tidy models allow.

Silver’s backdrop flipped from scarcity to availability

Ghali’s silver message was almost the reverse of the gold case.

“The context for silver has dramatically changed,” he said. In the last year, physical inventory availability had reached its scarcest levels since the Hunt brothers tried to corner the market nearly half a century ago. Today, he argued, availability looks different.

Deutsche Bank’s measure of free-floating London inventories, metal in commercial vaults available for purchase, has risen back to its highest level since November 2024. Comex, after drawing a wave of imports into the United States, still holds a stockpile he described as too large relative to open interest. That stockpile, in his framing, remains a backstop if London tightens again. Shanghai inventories have risen as well.

Price itself did part of the work. High prices catalyzed fast demand destruction. Ghali’s read on Chinese industrial demand for silver used in solar is probably down by a third in 2026 relative to last year. More inventory against a shrinking deficit raises the chance of a physical primary-market surplus in the coming year.

From that setup he drew two market conclusions:

  • Silver may underperform gold, with deterioration in the silver-to-gold ratio.
  • Volatility may stay more constrained than participants conditioned by last year’s moves expect.

Silver had run to all-time highs in the early months of the year, then suffered a 50% pullback after the start of the Iran war. Ghali’s warning is that markets keep expecting a repeat of that kind of swing even though the inventory and demand base has changed. Availability, in his view, should mean less drama and relative underperformance going forward.

Copper as the convex scarcity trade

Asked where the larger moves could appear, Ghali pointed to copper.

He described an increasingly convex reaction function tied to what he called the most acutely scarce copper environment on record, dating back to the 1980s. Dual stockpiling in the United States and China over many years has locked up a large share of aboveground inventories. Another way he put it: the U.S. and China combined now probably hold about 70% of the world’s global inventory pool.

“This is a really critically scarce copper environment, and we expect prices to rise as a result,” he said. For metals investors, that is a different transmission channel than gold’s monetary bid or silver’s inventory rebuild. It is a claim about physical lockup and how little free float may remain if demand reaccelerates or logistics tighten again.

Convexity language matters here. Ghali is not describing a gentle grind higher as the base case so much as a market where small shifts in available supply can produce outsized price responses because stockpiles are already spoken for.

What the three-metal split means for portfolios

Ghali’s map is useful precisely because it refuses a single metals narrative.

Gold, in his framing, benefits from underownership, official-sector demand running hotter than in the prior positioning trough, a larger institutional participant base, and the slow pressure of a Treasury bear market on yield-sensitive alternatives. That is closer to a capital-preservation and diversification story than a pure momentum story. It also rhymes with longer-cycle arguments such as Paulson’s early-innings bull-market case, where patience and positioning can matter as much as the next print.

Silver is the caution. Last year’s scarcity-and-volatility template may be the wrong playbook if London free float has rebuilt, Comex remains heavy, Shanghai stocks are higher, and Chinese solar-related demand is set to shrink sharply into 2026. Relative underperformance versus gold would not be a failure of “metals” as a complex. It would be the market pricing a different physical balance.

Copper is the industrial scarcity sleeve in the same interview. If U.S. and Chinese stockpiling has immobilized most visible inventory, the residual free float becomes the swing factor. That can matter for inflation-sensitive industrial exposure, but it is not the same asset as monetary bullion, and it will not always move with gold when growth fears dominate.

None of this is a promise on path or timing. Ghali’s gold case is strongest if discretionary investors eventually re-engage from a low base and if official buying stays elevated. His silver case weakens if demand destruction reverses faster than inventories rebuild, or if another physical squeeze develops despite the current backstops. His copper case depends on the stockpile lockup remaining binding when the market needs metal.

Cross-bank target culture has stayed elevated in recent coverage, including UBS lifting its gold target toward $5,400 into a 2027 frame and separate work pointing to a $5,000 gold marker by March 2027. Ghali’s contribution is less a single price call than a regime map: gold underowned, silver better supplied, copper acutely tight.

For long-horizon holders, the practical takeaway is discrimination. Monetary insurance, industrial silver beta, and scarce bulk metal are not one trade. Ghali’s interview is a reminder to match the metal to the risk you are actually trying to hedge.

When policy stress, inventory myths, and portfolio diversification needs collide, the edge goes to investors who separate the metal that still looks underowned from the one that just got easier to find.