Several commodities face headwinds in 2025 — but this metal’s record rally is set to continue
Gold bullions are displayed at GoldSilver Central’s office in Singapore June 19, 2017.
Edgar Su | Reuters
Commodity prices are largely expected to fall in 2025 due to a sluggish global economic outlook and a resurgent dollar, but gold and gas prices are poised to rally this year, according to industry experts.
Commodities had a mixed 2024: While investors flocked to gold to hedge against inflation, commodities such as iron ore fell as the world’s largest consumer of metals, China, struggled with tepid growth. The story this year is likely to be the same.
“Commodities in general will be under pressure across the board in 2025,” said research firm BMI’s head of commodities analysis Sabrin Chowdhury, adding that the strength of the U.S. dollar will cap demand for commodities priced in the greenback.
Market participants will be keeping an eye on further China stimulus in hopes that it may fuel a recovery in commodities demand in the world’s second-largest economy.
Oil prices to slip
Crude oil prices last year were dragged down by weak Chinese demand and a supply glut, and market watchers expect prices to remain pressured in 2025.
The International Energy Agency in November painted a bearish oil market picture for 2025, forecasting global oil demand to grow under a million barrels per day. This compares to a two million barrel per day increase in 2023.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia sees Brent oil prices falling to $70 per barrel this year on expectations increased oil supply from non‑OPEC+ countries that’ll eclipse the rise in global oil consumption.
Oil prices year-on-year
BMI said in its December note that the first half of 2025 was likely to see a supply glut as substantial new production from U.S., Canada, Guyana and Brazil comes online. Also, if OPEC+ plans to roll back voluntary cuts materialize, the oversupply will further pressure prices.
BMI noted that the demand picture in 2025 was not clear yet. “Global oil and gas demand remains uncertain, with stable economic growth and rising fuel demand offset by trade war impacts, inflation and contracting demand in developed markets.”
Global crude benchmark Brent was last trading at $76.34 per barrel, around the same levels as it was a year ago in early January.
Gas set to rise
Global natural gas prices have rallied since mid-December 2024, driven by cold weather and geopolitics, Citi analysts said.
Ukraine’s recent halt of Russian gas flow to several European nations on New Year’s Day has introduced greater uncertainty to the global gas markets. As long as the cutoff remains in place, gas prices are likely to remain elevated.
Colder weather for the rest of winter in the U.S. and Asia could also keep prices elevated, said Citi.
BMI forecasts gas prices to rise by about 40% in 2025 to $3.4 per million British thermal units (MMbtu) compared to an average of $2.4 per MMbtu in 2024, driven by growing demand from the LNG sector and higher net pipeline exports.
U.S. Henry Hub natural gas prices, which was the gauge that BMI referred to, are currently trading at $2.95 per MMbtu.
“LNG will continue to drive new consumption, supported by rising export capacity and strong demand in Europe and Asia,” BMI analysts wrote.
Gold may add sheen
Gold prices notched a slew of all-time highs last year, and the run of fresh records could extend in 2025.
“Investors are optimistic about gold and silver for 2025 because they are so pessimistic on geopolitics and government debt,” said Adrian Ash, director of research at BullionVault, a gold investment services firm, emphasizing on the yellow metal’s role as a hedge against risk.
Gold prices year-on-year
JPMorgan analysts also expect gold prices to rise, especially if U.S. policies become “more disruptive” in the form of increased tariffs, elevated trade tensions and higher risks to economic growth.
Gold notched its best annual performance in over a decade last year. Bullion prices rose about 26% in 2024, data from FactSet showed, driven by central bank as well as retail investor purchases.
BullionVault and JPMorgan expect gold prices to go up to $3,000 per ounce in 2025.
Silver and platinum likely to advance
Gold’s poorer cousin, silver, could also see prices rise, especially as demand for solar power — silver is used in building solar panels — remains resilient and the metal’s supply stays limited.
“Both silver and platinum have strong underlying deficit fundamentals, and we think a catch up trade later in 2025, once base metals find firmer footing, could be quite potent,” JPMorgan analysts noted.
Solar power panels near Crawford Notch, New Hampshire. Silver is primarily utilized in industrial applications and is frequently incorporated in the production of automobiles, solar panels, jewelry, and electronics
Adam Jeffery | CNBC
Silver is primarily utilized in industrial applications and is frequently incorporated in the production of automobiles, solar panels, jewelry and electronics. It is also needed in building artificial intelligence products and has military applications as well, said CIO of Swiss Asia Capital’s CIO Juerg Kiener.
That said, silver’s upside will be dependent on global industrial demand which will be impacted by Trump’s tariffs, precious metals trading services group MKS Pamp wrote in an outlook report.
Copper faces demand worries
Prices of copper, which is key to the manufacturing of electric vehicles and power grids, may see a dent after shooting to a record high this year on the back of a global energy transition.
“A potential deceleration in energy transition amid Trump’s policy shifts might dampen, to some extent, the ‘green sentiment’ that bolstered prices in 2024,” BMI wrote in a note.
Close up of electrical engineer inspecting copper windings in electrical engineering factory
Monty Rakusen | Digitalvision | Getty Images
While copper prices rose to a record high in May 2024 largely as a result of a squeezed market, they trended lower for the rest of the year, and will continue to do so, John Gross, president at the eponymous metals management consultancy John Gross and Company, told CNBC.
A cocktail mix of high inflation, elevated interest rates and a stronger dollar will weigh on all metals markets, the metals market veteran said.
Iron ore forecast to drop
Iron ore prices may also slide on the back of an oversupply resulting from Chinese policies and geopolitics.
“The expected U.S. tariffs on China, changing nature of Chinese stimulus and new low-cost supply [will] push the market into further surplus,” Goldman Sachs said, forecasting prices to decline to $95 per ton in 2025.
This despite China likely to import record amount of iron ore this year, according to Reuters. Iron ore prices fell over 24%, according to data from FactSet.
Cocoa and coffee
Cocoa and coffee prices stand out amongst the soft commodities basket, having scaled record highs in 2024 fueled by adverse weather conditions and supply tightness in key producing regions. But demand may taper in 2025.
“Given that these commodities are trading at levels well above cost of production, we expect production to expand and demand to contract in the coming year,” Rabobank researchers said.
Environment
Tesla’s Robyn Denholm made 5x more than next best-paid chair, a role Musk said was usefuless
Robyn Denholm, Tesla’s chairwoman, made five times more money than the next best-paid board chair, a role Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk said was useless.
In 2018, Musk settled with the SEC for falsely claiming he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $420 a share, he was forced to resign as chair of Tesla’s board.
Musk basically handpicked Robyn Denholm to become the new chair, which he then called a useless “honorific” titled:
“Chairman’ is an honorific, not executive role, which means it’s not needed to run Tesla. Will retire that title at Tesla in 3 years.”
Denholm made a lot of money in this useless honorific role.
She has made over $530 million, almost entirely through stock option compensation, since becoming Tesla’s chairperson.
Most of her stock sales happened over the last year:
The New York Times released a new report looking into Denholm’s compensation and found that she was paid about 5 times more than the next best-paid nonexecutive chair.
Tesla paid its chair about 5 times more than UnitedHealth’s:
The nonexecutive chair with the next-highest profit from selling shares in the company he oversees was Stephen Hemsley of UnitedHealth Group. Mr. Hemsley has earned more than $100 million from the sale of UnitedHealth shares since November 2018, though he received all of that stock while he was chief executive of the health care company.
To Musk’s point about the role being honorific, it’s not clear what Denholm accomplished during her time as chair.
She and the rest of Tesla’s board oversee Tesla’s executive management, led by Musk, but Musk has been allowed to do whatever he wants for years.
They have backed his every move, granted him a $55 billion CEO compensation package, and remained silent when he threatened Tesla shareholders that he would not develop AI products at Tesla unless given a larger, more controlling share of the company, or decided to fire Tesla’s entire charging team to make an example out of the head of the team.
Most recently, they have not addressed the protests at Tesla stores and product boycotts, which are attributed to Musk’s involvement in politics, angering a significant portion of the population and Tesla’s consumer base.
Only recently was there a report suggesting the board floated the idea of replacing Musk to gain leverage in forcing him to spend more time at Tesla. Even then, the board quickly denied the report, which only claimed that they were doing their jobs in planning the CEO succession.
Electrek’s Take
Based on Musk’s comment, Denholm was paid half a billion dollars to do nothing. That’s literally all that was required of her after replacing Musk as chair of the board: nothing.
Musk is in charge. She is just an “honorific” figurehead that is required to back his every move.
Just as Tesla’s then-third-largest individual shareholder, after Musk, Leo KoGuan, told Electrek last year, when he couldn’t get his concerns about Musk heard by the board, Tesla is “a family business masquerading as a public company.”
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Environment
UrbanLink nearly doubles order of REGENT electric seagliders to transport over 4M passengers a year
Less than a year after announcing an order for 27 electric seaglider planes from REGENT Craft, advanced air mobility (AAM) specialist UrbanLink has nearly doubled that order size to support plans for high-frequency commercial flights around the southeastern United States.
While advanced air mobility may be a nascent industry, companies around the globe are continuously gearing up to establish commercial networks that support air taxi travel and other sustainable commercial operations. In the US, particularly Southern Florida, UrbanLink has been making tons of moves to establish itself as a major player in that space when it happens.
UrbanLink has already been working for years to enable zero-emission, end-to-end travel within a 500-mile range by 2028 before expanding that range to 1,000 miles by 2030, beginning with its hub cities of Miami, Los Angeles, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The company believes its actions have adequately positioned it to become the first airline in the US to integrate electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft into its fleet. Fellow eVTOL network Archer Aviation is also in the race, so it’s exciting times for commercial air taxi development.
UrbanLink has committed to purchasing from several eVTOL and electric plane developers, including Artemis Sea Crafts, Eviation Aircraft, and Lilium, as we reported back in June 2024. Last fall, the AAM operator announced it was adding more vessels to its growing fleet in South Florida, committing to purchase 27 electric seagliders from REGENT Craft.
Today, UrbanLink and REGENT announced an expansion of their existing partnership in which the former has upped its purchase order to 47 electric seagliders.
UrbanLink ups seaglider order to support FL, Puerto Rico
REGENT Craft and UrbanLink shared details of the expanded partnership this morning, in hopes of establishing Florida as the bona fide leader in sustainable coastal aerial mobility.
Per the company, the nearly doubling of the existing order for REGENT’s Viceroy electric seagliders will support a more rapid rollout of UrbanLink’s aerial operations between the southern Florida and Puerto Rico regions. REGENT co-founder and CEO Billy Thalheimer spoke about the expanded seaglider order:
UrbanLink’s expanded order is a clear vote of confidence in REGENT’s seaglider technology and is testament to our continued timely execution certification and product development milestones. Together, we’re building a more convenient and connected future for coastal communities.
As the map above shows, electric sea glider travel can cut the travel time from Miami to West Palm Beach by nearly 75%. This single route represents a growing demand for convenient and more sustainable alternatives for short-haul travel in the US, and UrbanLink hopes to provide that to Florida visitors and beyond.
For example, the company shared that it anticipates that its seaglider operations in Miami alone could provide more sustainable travel options to up to 4.3 million passengers per year when commercial operations begin. UrbanLink founder and chairman Ed Wegel also spoke:
We’re proud to expand our partnership with REGENT and bring this revolutionary technology to more passengers traveling high-demand routes across Florida and Puerto Rico. This partnership propels Florida to the forefront of global innovation in advanced, all-electric mobility.
REGENT’s full-scale Viceroy electric seaglider prototype is currently in the process of successful sea trials en route to certification from the US Coast Guard. These 12-passenger vessels can reach up to 180 mph and travel up to 180 miles on a single charge.
First deliveries of the Viceroy seagliders to UrbanLink are expected to begin sometime in 2027.
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It’s official. Toyota is finally launching a new EV in the US. The C-HR will return in what’s expected to be an affordable electric SUV. Here’s our first look at the 2026 Toyota C-HR, a surprisingly stylish EV with nearly 300 miles of range.
Meet the 2026 Toyota C-HR electric SUV for the US
Who could forget the original Toyota C-HR? The funky-looking compact SUV was priced under $25,000 but was discontinued in 2022 to make way for the more efficient Corolla Cross hybrid.
The C-HR will make a comeback in the US as a fully electric SUV with nearly 300 miles of range. After revealing the electric SUV in Europe earlier this year, Toyota confirmed on Wednesday that the C-HR will, in fact, arrive in the US.
Outside of a “+” added at the end of the name (C-HR+), the US and European versions look nearly identical. The electric version is a drastic upgrade over the retired gas-powered model.
Toyota gave it a stylish new look with an updated design closer to its new Corolla and Crown. The smaller SUV features Toyota’s “hammerhead front end” with slim LED headlights and distinct character lines.
The C-HR EV is 177.9″ long, 73.6″ wide, and 63.8″ tall, or about the size of the Kia Niro EV (174″ long, 72″ wide, and 62″ tall). It’s also a bit smaller than the bZ4X SUV, Toyota’s first EV, at 185″ long, 73″ wide, and 65″ tall.
Powered by a 74.7 kWh battery, Toyota expects the 2026 C-HR will get up to 290 miles of driving range. It will also be equipped with an NACS port to access Tesla’s Supercharger network. Using DC fast charging, the electric SUV can recharge from 10% to 80% in about 30 minutes.
The 2026 C-HR will come with standard AWD with up to 338 hp. Toyota said the added power is good for a 0 to 60 mph sprint in around 5 seconds.
Stylish new design inside and out
Toyota’s new EV will be available in SE and XSE trim with “great interior features.” These include a 14″ touchscreen infotainment system with Toyota Audio Multimedia system (with Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support), a digital driver display, wireless phone chargers, and the Toyota Safety Sense 3.0 system.
Other standard features include a power liftgate, low-profile roof rails, and rain-sensing wipers. You can also choose from 18″ or 20″ wheels and several different paint colors.
The XSE model gains 20″ gun metal finished wheels, SofTex and synthetic suede-trimmed seats, a Digital Rearview Mirror with HomeLink, a Panoramic view Monitor, and more.
Toyota will offer the 2026 C-HR in fully electric (EV), Hybrid, Plug-in Hybrid (PHEV), and Fuel Cell powertrain options. The new electric SUV is expected to arrive at dealerships across the US in 2026.
The new C-HR debut comes just a day after Toyota revealed its new bZ electric SUV for the US. Toyota is dropping the “bZ4X” name and giving it some significant upgrades, including more range (now up to 314 miles), a built-in NACS port, and more.
Although Toyota has yet to reveal prices, since the C-HR is smaller than the bZ4X, it’s expected to start at around $35,000.
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