Warren Buffett has famously said that the stock market is a machine that transfers wealth from impatient people to patient people. Many opportunities to make money will only be available if you are prepared to wait, sometimes longer than you hoped when you initially invested. Allied to this is the issue of the predictability of the ultimate outcome. Counterintuitively, it is sometimes easier to predict events that are further away, than it is to predict short term outcomes. For example, most people can predict average weather conditions 6 months away (if we are in summer then 6 months later it will be cooler). But few people would feel confident predicting the weather even 10 days in the future. Sometimes longer term predictions can be made with more certainty. With this in mind, we have identified 10 long term secular trends that will play out over the long term. At All Weather we try to identify and predict long term trends and then to identify companies to play these trends in the stock market.
Some structural shifts – electrification, AI, geopolitics and an ageing world – are likely to shape markets for the next decade or more.
1. Rare earths
Why invest: Rare earth elements such as neodymium and dysprosium go into the permanent magnets inside EV motors, wind turbines, drones and missiles. China controls most mining and roughly 90% of processing, so Western governments are paying a premium for secure supply.
Growth drivers: Chinese export restrictions, US and EU critical-minerals funding, government price floors and offtake deals, and rising magnet demand from EVs, robotics and defence companies.
Companies to research: MP Materials (US), Lynas Rare Earths (Australia), Iluka Resources (Australia), Energy Fuels (US) and the VanEck Rare Earth and Strategic Metals ETF (REMX) for diversified exposure.
2. Precious metals
Why invest: Gold and silver have preserved purchasing power for centuries and tend to hold up when currencies, bonds or geopolitics wobble. Silver and platinum add industrial demand on top of their monetary role. Furthermore, we expect a weaker USD in the future.
Growth drivers: Record central-bank gold buying, high government debt, expectations of lower real interest rates once the oil price settles, as well as silver demand from solar panels and electronics.
Companies to research: Internationally; Newmont, Agnico Eagle Mines, Barrick, Wheaton Precious Metals and Franco-Nevada. For South African investors; Gold Fields, Harmony Gold, Sibanye-Stillwater and Northam Platinum are JSE-listed options.
3. Uranium
Why invest: Nuclear power is back in favour as reliable, zero-carbon baseload electricity. Years of under-investment after the Fukushima disaster left a shortage of what reactors consume.
Growth drivers: Reactor life extensions and new builds in China, India and the West; tech companies signing nuclear power deals for data centres; small modular reactors (SMRs); and Western moves away from Russian enrichment through the purchase of their oil and gas.
Companies to research: Cameco (Canada), Kazatomprom (Kazakhstan), NexGen Energy, Paladin Energy, Centrus Energy (enrichment), and the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust or Global X Uranium ETF (URA).
4. Copper
Why invest: Copper is the metal of electrification – every grid line, EV, charger, data centre and wind farm needs it. Greenfield mines are expensive, have huge environmental hurdles and take 10 to 15 years to develop.
Growth drivers: Grid upgrades, EVs (which use several times more copper than petrol cars), AI data-centre power demand, renewables, and a thin pipeline of new projects.
Companies to research: Freeport-McMoRan, Southern Copper, Ivanhoe Mines, First Quantum Minerals, Antofagasta. It is also worth considering diversified miners BHP and Anglo American.
5. Cyber security
Why invest: Cyber attacks are now more common. Cyber security spending is one of the last areas that companies cut in a downturn. Furthermore, the risk of a rogue AI agent accessing a system is growing every day. The leading vendors of cyber security sell recurring subscriptions with high gross margins.
Growth drivers: Ransomware, AI-powered attacks, cloud migration, remote work, state-sponsored hacking, as well as stricter disclosure and data-protection rules.
Companies to research: CrowdStrike (endpoint), Palo Alto Networks (network and platform), Zscaler (cloud access), Fortinet (firewalls), Cloudflare and Okta (identity). The First Trust (CIBR) and Global X (BUG) cyber-ETFs offer a diversified basket.
6. Biotech
Why invest: An ageing global population and scientific breakthroughs are expanding what medicine can treat. Successful drugs can earn high margins for years under patent protection, though individual trial results make single stocks volatile.
Growth drivers: GLP-1 obesity and diabetes drugs, gene and cell therapies, AI-assisted drug discovery, oncology advances, and big-pharma acquisitions of smaller biotechs facing patent cliffs.
Companies to research: Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk (obesity leaders), Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Regeneron, Amgen, Gilead and CRISPR Therapeutics. The iShares Biotechnology (IBB) and SPDR S&P Biotech (XBI) ETFs spread the trial risk.
7. Oil and gas pipeline companies
Why invest: Pipeline operators earn fee-based, often inflation-linked income for moving and storing energy, so profits depend more on volumes than on oil prices. Many pay dividend yields well above the market average. Pipe manufacturers benefit from the same build-out through demand for new and replacement infrastructure.
Growth drivers: Record US natural gas production, LNG export growth, gas-fired power for AI data centres, and the difficulty of permitting new pipelines, which protects existing networks.
Companies to research: Vallourec (manufacturing), Enbridge, Williams, Kinder Morgan, Enterprise Products Partners, Energy Transfer, Cheniere Energy (LNG) and TC Energy.
8. Defence companies
Why invest: Defence contractors work on multi-year government contracts with large order backlogs, giving them unusually good revenue visibility. Rising geopolitical tension has reversed decades of post Cold War spending cuts.
Growth drivers: NATO countries are moving defence spend from <1% of GDP to nearly 5% in some cases. The war in Ukraine and Middle East conflicts, ammunition and air-defence restocking, drones, space and military AI. Plus the USA restocking armaments depleted in the Iranian conflict.
Companies to research: Rheinmetall (Germany), BAE Systems (UK), Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Saab, Thales, Leonardo and newer tech-led players such as Palantir.
9. Battery storage
Why invest: Solar and wind generate power only when the sun shines or the wind blows; batteries store that energy for later. Lithium-ion pack costs have fallen sharply, making grid-scale storage economic in many markets.
Growth drivers: Renewable build-out, grid stability needs, data-centre backup power, EV adoption, home batteries (familiar to South Africans after load-shedding) and new chemistries such as LFP and sodium-ion.
Companies to research: CATL and BYD (China), Tesla (Megapack), Fluence Energy, LG Energy Solution, Samsung SDI, as well as lithium producers; Albemarle and SQM. The Global X Lithium & Battery Tech ETF (LIT) gives broad exposure.
10. Artificial intelligence companies
Why invest: AI is becoming a general-purpose technology, like electricity or the internet, with the potential to lift productivity across every industry. The biggest beneficiaries so far, are those who supply the chips, cloud capacity and software that AI runs on.
Growth drivers: Hundreds of billions of dollars a year in data-centre spending by hyperscalers, enterprise adoption of AI assistants and agents, custom AI chips, and AI moving onto phones, cars and robots.
Companies to research: Nvidia (AI chips), TSMC, SK Hynix, Samsung (chip manufacturing), Broadcom (custom silicon and networking), ASML (chip-making equipment), Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta (cloud and models).
I believe AI will be one of the most powerful forces shaping humanity’s immediate future. Although our macro team identified the trends above, I used AI to compile some of the supporting detail and more mundane tasks of spell checking. The analysts and fund managers who learn to use AI productively will be best positioned to succeed.
Closing thoughts
Several of these trends reinforce each other: AI needs power, which lifts uranium, gas pipelines, copper and batteries, while geopolitics links rare earths, defence and cyber security. This overlap means a portfolio built on all ten may be less diversified than it looks. But I am sure no one reading this will dispute that most of the trends above are well established, and likely to continue.