Most commentary on the global economy is about the visible: an election, a rate decision, the latest flashpoint in the Middle East. These things move markets for a week. The forces that will decide the next six years operate on a much longer timescale, and after fifty years of watching commodity markets I have learned to pay more attention to them than to the headlines. This is how I see the period from now to 2032.
The cycle I watch most closely
At the centre of my framework is the Benner Cycle, a chart drawn up by an Ohio farmer more than 150 years ago that has marked major turning points in prices and panics with a consistency that still surprises people when they first see it. It identifies 2026 as a peak and 2032 as the close of a 100-year cycle that began in the depths of the Great Depression. I do not treat it as a timetable, but I do treat it as a map, and the map says we are in the final stretch.
I do not expect a straight line from here to 2032. What I expect is a sequence: the current correction continues, then a substantial relief rally that takes equities well above where they are now, then recession across much of the world, and finally a renewed inflationary surge between 2028 and 2032 before the cycle ends in a bust.
Geopolitics comes first
My analysis always starts with geopolitics, because that is where the money flows are decided. The meetings between Russia, China and Iran over the past two years are not theatre. They mark the transition from a unipolar world, organised around the United States and the dollar, to a multipolar one in which several powers set their own terms. The transition is still early, but it will define the coming six years.
Energy sits at the heart of it. Iran now has a greater say over the oil routes leaving the Gulf than at any time in my career, and any change in supply, transport or pricing from that region works its way through manufacturing, agriculture and consumer prices everywhere. I have written separately on what the multipolar shift means for commodities; the point here is that it is the backdrop against which every other part of the cycle plays out.
The sequence from here
The correction and the rally. The present correction has further to run. When it is done I expect a powerful relief rally, driven by liquidity rather than earnings, that will convince many people the trouble is over. It will not be. That rally is the last good opportunity to raise cash and reduce exposure before the recessionary phase.
The recession. Recessionary conditions then develop across much of the world. For commodities this is the phase that catches people out, because the structural story is intact but prices fall anyway. Copper, which has already run ahead of the physical market, will give back a good deal of its gains.
The inflation of 2028 to 2032. Governments will respond to recession the way they always do, with fiscal and monetary stimulus on a scale that overwhelms supply. Add rising food prices, fertiliser shortages and weather disruption, and you have the conditions for an inflationary surge I would compare to 1978 to 1982. That is when the structural tightness in metals, energy and food shows up in prices, and when paper assets lose ground to real ones.
Why these are not separate stories
Economic pressure, geopolitical realignment, inflation and monetary policy are usually analysed in separate columns. I think that is a mistake. They are all expressions of the same thing: the exhaustion of a century-long cycle of credit, dollar dominance and Western-led growth, and the birth of whatever replaces it. The next six years may not simply mark the end of another market cycle. They may mark the end of an era.
What I am watching
Four things above all. The behaviour of the Gulf oil routes and Iran’s role in them. China’s domestic demand for copper and the inventory it is building. Central bank gold buying, which tells you what the official sector really thinks of the dollar. And the gap between the Shanghai and Western prices for metals, because that is where the multipolar world shows up in numbers before it shows up in the news.
Whether my precise timing proves right remains to be seen; cycles are maps, not timetables. But the direction is clear enough to act on. I set out the evidence each week in the Simon Hunt Strategic Brief, and for the copper side of the story see whether there really is a structural copper deficit.
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This article is a summary. Subscribers to the Simon Hunt Strategic Brief get the complete copper data each month, the China and Middle East reports as events unfold, and the scenario work on what each outcome means for oil, rates and metals. Free subscribers get the weekly digest and Simon’s public notes.
