Three calls and three hits for Dollar Bill - what’s next?

Bulls N’ Bears Dollar Bill reckons any “I told you so” column is a dangerous path to tread. It tempts fate, offends modesty, and invites the gods to short your next position. But sometimes, in a rank display of self-indulgence, Dollar Bill likes to glance at the scoreboard. After all, a record’s a record and for the past few years Dollar Bill’s been humming the market tune at least a bar or two ahead of the band. And now, there’s a bit more to add, particularly with nickel and lithium starting to daylight on the horizon.

Back in the gloom of 2022, when the word uranium still cleared a room faster than a margin call, Dollar Bill was whispering heresy. The world wanted clean energy, net zero and absolution. And yet, there sat uranium, glowing quietly in the corner, waiting to be forgiven for its accidental sins of the past. With ‘small modular reactors” or “SMR’s” starting to get the attention of the energy glitterati around the world, Dollar Bill wrote at the time, “uranium promises to become one of the stars of the show”. And sure enough, the pariah metal became the comeback kid, marching from the scrapheap to the centrepiece of the energy transition.

Uranium prices subsequently doubled in the next two years, peaking around US$110 a pound. Prices have taken a little breather since, but are still trading above US$80 a pound. Uranium remains a thing and Dollar Bill wouldn’t bet against another price revival in the next couple of years.

Then came silver. It was gold’s overlooked understudy that refused to stay in the wings. In May last year – more than 18 month ago - while gold was stealing the spotlight and copper was flexing in its redemption arc prior to its short-lived July 2025 correction, Dollar Bill tapped out a column headlined “A Silver Linings Playbook”. That piece laid out the argument that silver, not gold, was the real modern metal and the one to watch – part precious, part practical and these days, indispensable to everything from solar panels to circuit boards.

Eighteen months on, that call couldn’t have been more prescient. In the time since, silver has more than quietly stolen a march on its shinier golden cousin with demand fuelled by a global hunger for electricity, efficiency and all things renewable. In fact, over the past year, spot silver has more than doubled the returns paid by gold, peaking above US$83 an ounce just this week before an afternoon sell off yesterday saw it give back about US$10 an ounce. But despite that one-day price slump silver is still up an incredible 180 per cent in the past year. In comparison, spot gold, which is still on a glittering tear, has managed only a miserly 73 per cent hike in the same time. While the headlines still scream gold and for good reason, silver has massively outperformed, driven by industrial demand trumping central-bank fear.

On a pure financial metric, 1 gram per tonne gold in a drill result is now the equivalent of less than 60 grams per tonne silver. Only three years ago, that ratio was sitting at about 90 grams silver to one gram gold.

Edward Meir, one of the most respected voices in global commodity markets and senior analyst at Marex Group – a powerhouse with thousands of employees and offices spanning 40 countries – reckons silver has still got the edge over gold: “We expect silver to continue outperforming gold as industrial demand, particularly from solar-panel production, remains exceptionally strong” he said.

This opinion carries some serious weight.

Silver is no longer a hedge; it’s hardware. Silver doesn’t just sit in vaults – it runs the grid that powers the vault. The irony is more than just delicious: the “poor man’s gold” now powers the rich man’s toys. Dollar Bill made this call nearly two years ago and while some thought this to be just bar talk at the Club, Dollar Bill’s crystal ball was bang on the money.

And then there are the small caps - those weary little battlers of the exchange that everyone had left for dead until recently. Dollar Bill’s “tide is turning for small caps” musings, published well over a year ago, was delivered when small cap sentiment was shot, capital was comatose and IPOs were spoken of in the past tense. Since then, as predicted by The Dollar, small caps have for the first time in years outperformed everything else.

History has a habit of rhyming. Falling rates, rising risk appetite and a touch of inflation fatigue; all these old ingredients were back in the bowl.

Even now, some of the big desks are still arguing about whether this is the start of a new small-cap cycle or just a dead cat that’s recently been through obedience school. But the pattern fits too neatly to ignore. Every easing cycle breathes life into the bottom end. If you take a step back, you can feel it. The capital raisings are livelier, the optimism less apologetic and the analysts have been dusting off their old “re-rating potential” slides.

Furthermore, the very smallest end of the IPO market has gone from nothing, to something real. Listings were all but frozen just 18 months ago, when the ASX recorded a 20-year low of only 29 new listings in 2024. Then the pipeline quietly started to fill. By mid-2025 multiple small-cap IPOs were back on the agenda, small raises were again oversubscribed and the brokers started dusting off their listing playbooks. Late November and December this year has only seen the pace quicken.

So yes, it’s been three swings from the rafters and three hits for Dollar Bill with uranium, silver and the revival of small caps.

And to be honest, given Dollar Bill likes to think of himself as the quiet, retiring type, it is slightly embarrassing trying to fend off the accolades from the smoking jacket types in the cigar bar on the way to the Gents at the Club these days.

Only recently, a self-described debonair fellow in the group with a handlebar moustache (who is obviously an avid reader of Dollar Bill’s columns) yelled “Hey Dollar, what’s next?”

So looking ahead, if we dare to tempt fate a little further, Dollar Bill, on a roll decided to have a wild swing again - this time in favour of lithium and nickel. Forget rare earths - now a common and mainstream favourite amongst forecasters - instead what’s caught the eye is the recent price movement and potential for a revival in nickel and lithium – after all these two are also a big part of the electric vehicle revolution right?

Rare earths go in the electric motor magnets and lithium and nickel are shoved into the batteries.

To be fair, lithium has been on the move for a few months and looks to have found a floor, but the next step could be its spring. After bottoming earlier this year, spot prices for both hydroxide and carbonate have already started a recovery. Hydroxide, typically produced from hard rock lithium – or spodumene – has seen traded prices climb about 25 per cent in the past six months while carbonate prices have fared even better, up almost 30 per cent in the past six months to about US$13,000 per tonne as inventories thin and EV demand rebounds in China and the US.

These current prices are still a fraction of the lofty heights hit in 2022 when carbonate traded north of $US80,000 per tonne. But following its collapse to sub $US10,000 a tonne in late 2024 / early 2025, more recent pricing since looks to have flipped from despair to accumulation. Producers are tightening supply, new projects are being shelved, and the oversupply narrative that spooked the market is starting to sound dated.

Nickel is another, which has also been on the mat for years, bruised by a flood of Indonesian supply and government-backed subsidies that turned balance sheets into battlefields. But even commodity cycles have half-lives. Nickel still sits at the core of the battery and stainless-steel story, and the structural demand from electric vehicles and energy storage isn’t fading - it’s only compounding. Supply distortions more often than not delay reality, but almost never defy it. When the market finally wakes to the mismatch between short-term oversupply and long-term need, nickel’s next move could be sharp enough to make up for lost time.

And to confirm the point so humbly made about The Dollar’s forecasting record of late, just in the past two weeks spot nickel has charged more than 11 per cent higher and is now changing hands back above US$15,000 a tonne - its highest point in more than 6 months.

Until recently, both nickel and lithium were clubbed senseless by oversupply fears, trading well beneath long-term incentive prices. But both still sit at the heart of the new energy story and simply won’t roll over and die. A quick glance at the latest price movements tell the story and The Dollar reckons the recovery in both has further to play.

So yes, Dollar Bill has dared to say I told you so – sort of. But don’t expect a victory lap. If the next round of expectation goes pear-shaped, you’ll find The Dollar back at the club nursing something brown and muttering about “market timing” to whoever still believes in it or anything else he says. Until then, Dollar Bill will take the small pleasure of polishing the monocle and raising a quiet glass to three words that really should never be spoken aloud in finance – I told you so.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au