Guides | Metal Pilot Blog

Cobalt — A Complete Market Guide (2026)

Cobalt is the metal nobody sets out to mine. Roughly 99% of it comes out of the ground as a by-product of copper and nickel, which means the cobalt market’s own price has almost no power to call forth new supply — and …

Published Sep 20, 2026 63 min read Cobalt Battery Metals Guide

Iron — A Complete Market Guide (2026)

Iron is civilisation’s structural metal — the element that becomes steel, and therefore the skeleton of every building, bridge, ship, car and machine on Earth. By tonnage the iron ore market dwarfs every other metal: 2.6 …

Published Sep 6, 2026 48 min read Iron Base Metals Guide

Platinum Group Metals — A Complete Market Guide (2026)

The platinum group metals market is the strangest corner of commodities: six precious metals rarer than gold, mined at scale in exactly two places on Earth, and consumed mostly by a single technology — the catalytic …

Published Aug 30, 2026 43 min read PGM Precious Metals Guide

The Monetary System: Sovereign Debt Crises (2026)

The Monetary System series built up the machinery of government money — how a state spends and borrows (Part 1), how that debt is financed and priced in the bond market (Part 2), and how the central bank sets the rates …

Published Aug 29, 2026 85 min read Macro Sovereign Debt Guide General

The Monetary System, Part 3: Rates & Inflation (2026)

The first guide in this series explained why governments run deficits; the second, how they borrow. This one covers the institution that sits above both — the central bank. Since 2008, central banks have moved from quiet …

Published Aug 25, 2026 54 min read Macro Inflation Guide General

The Monetary System, Part 2: Bonds & Yields (2026)

The previous guide in this series ended with a government running a deficit. This one picks up the next question: how does it borrow the money? The answer is the government bond market — the largest, deepest financial …

Published Aug 25, 2026 41 min read Macro Bond Market Guide General

The Monetary System, Part 1: Spending & Debt (2026)

Every government does three things with money: it spends, it taxes, and it borrows the difference. Do that year after year and the borrowed differences pile into a debt — and across the rich world and China alike, that …

Published Aug 25, 2026 92 min read Macro Sovereign Debt Guide General

Coal — A Complete Market Guide (2026)

Coal is the fuel the modern world was built on — and the one it keeps declaring dead while burning more of it than ever. In 2025 the coal market set another all-time record: 8.85 billion tonnes consumed, more than every …

Published Aug 23, 2026 47 min read Coal Guide

Nickel — A Complete Market Guide (2026)

Nickel is the metal that makes stainless steel stainless — and, more recently, the energy-dense heart of the nickel-rich batteries that power long-range electric vehicles. No major metal market has been remade as fast or …

Published Aug 16, 2026 52 min read Nickel Base Metals Guide

Rare Earths — A Complete Market Guide (2026)

Rare earths are the seventeen metals that make modern technology small, light and efficient — above all the neodymium magnets inside every EV motor, wind turbine, smartphone and guided missile. No commodity carries more …

Published Aug 9, 2026 51 min read Rare Earth Energy Metals Guide

Lithium — A Complete Market Guide (2026)

Lithium is the lightest metal in existence and the irreplaceable ingredient of the lithium-ion battery — which makes the lithium market a leveraged bet on the electrification of everything. No commodity’s demand is …

Published Aug 2, 2026 49 min read Lithium Battery Metals Guide

Commodities Across the Cycle: A Macro Regime Guide (2026)

Most commodity writing treats each raw material in isolation. But investors don’t hold a commodity in a vacuum — they hold it inside a portfolio, during a particular economic weather system. The question that actually …

Published Jul 25, 2026 36 min read Macro Business Cycles Guide

Natural Gas — A Complete Market Guide (2026)

Natural gas is the world’s fastest-growing fossil fuel and the swing fuel of the power grid — it heats homes, fires industry, and increasingly sets the marginal price of electricity. Unlike oil, gas has no single global …

Published Jul 19, 2026 44 min read Oil and Gas Natural Gas Guide

Silver — A Complete Market Guide (2026)

Silver is the two-faced metal: half precious-metal store of value, half critical industrial input. It trades alongside gold as a monetary hedge, yet more than half of demand now comes from factories — above all from …

Published Jul 12, 2026 39 min read Silver Precious Metals Guide

Uranium — A Complete Market Guide (2026)

Uranium is the most energy-dense fuel humanity uses — a single pellet the size of a fingertip holds the energy of a tonne of coal — and after a decade in the wilderness it has become one of the most talked-about …

Published Jul 5, 2026 54 min read Uranium Energy Metals Guide

Copper — A Complete Market Guide (2026)

Copper is the metal the modern economy is wired with, and the one the energy transition cannot do without — every electric motor, grid cable, data-centre and solar farm runs on it. In 2024–2025 copper repeatedly set …

Published Jun 28, 2026 46 min read Copper Base Metals Guide

Gold — A Complete Market Guide (2026)

Gold is the oldest monetary asset still trading every business day, and in 2024–2025 it did something unusual: it set record highs while nominal interest rates were high — a regime that normally works against it. This …

Published Jun 21, 2026 45 min read Gold Precious Metals Guide

Oil — A Complete Market Guide (2026)

Oil is the single largest traded commodity on earth and still the backbone of the global energy system — and in the mid-2020s it is a market pulled in two directions at once, between OPEC+ quota discipline and record US …

Published Jun 14, 2026 64 min read Oil and Gas Guide