Transcription
Hey everyone, and thanks for jumping back into the radioactive heavy metal verse. Today, we're going to talk about uranium and discuss whether it is and continues to be a good long-term investment.
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Now, I will say a disclaimer. I am bullish on uranium. I have been bullish on it forever. Uh, I do own stocks related to uranium. So, I want to get those disclaimers out of the way. I will say this to some degree, beyond just holding it, I am biased, and I I want to make sure that that is clear. I am very biased, and you could argue that that that's not necessarily the best place to be coming from, but I I I do have a background in nuclear, which is one of the reasons arguably why I have just been blindly bullish on the on this this industry really for the last six years or so.
Um, for those that don't know, my undergrad was actually in mathematics, but then I did a master's and a PhD in nuclear engineering. For the two of you that care, my dissertation was on radiation damage in ceramics using molecular dynamic simulations and in-situ transmission electron microscopy. So, my background is nuclear, and it's it's looking at at at at radio, um, basically looking at like radiation damage that comes from these materials. And so there is a bias involved, and I want to be clear about that. But with that said, I I think that fundamentally and technically, the industry remains bullish. Okay.
Now, first of all, we must understand what even is uranium. It is not a precious metal. So, I I you can't go around saying it is, 'cause it's not. Precious metals are, you know, they they they can't be something like uranium. Um, from memory, I think, you know, one of the things that precious metals needs to be is is chemically noble, right? And and also it needs to have some type of um monetary aspect or it could like where it could be like minted into coins. Uh, and and obviously gold and silver clearly fall under that umbrella. Um, uranium is not really something that falls into that umbrella. You need to be able to like melt it and re-mint it without loss. And gold and silver can fall into that. Uh, not so much uranium. For something to be noble, right, for for you to have a chemically noble gas, it basically means that it it can't easily corrode, rust, or oxidize essentially. And so a lot of metals fall into this category. You have gold, you have silver, platinum, uh, palladium, I believe rhodium falls into that category. But things like uranium, um, lithium, copper, iron, they don't really fall into that category. So they're not precious metals. For uranium, you might call it a strategic energy metal. So, if you own uranium or you want to own uranium or you start owning it, it would be part of your strategic energy metal portfolio. It's not a precious metal.
The cycles for uranium arguably are very different than the cycles for gold. So, it doesn't necessarily make sense to to look at gold or silver and be like, "Okay, well, this is what they're doing. Therefore, uranium has to do something similar." That doesn't necessarily make the most amount of sense because the fundamental drivers behind them are very different. For something like uranium, historically, there has obviously been a lot more regulatory compliance needed, right? You have the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the NRC, and and there's just a lot of hoops you have to jump through when it comes to the nuclear industry.
Up. Be that as it may, with growing energy demands, just as the population of the world continues to increase, with growing energy demands due to artificial intelligence, etc., it seems that our energy needs are only going to grow. They're only going to grow. Now, could we have a recession at some point that that temporarily slows that? Yeah, it's possible. But you can't go through your entire life worrying about that kind of stuff, right? Right. I mean, like, yes, it's going to happen. Everyone knows that it's going to happen. Um, but it's also hard to sort of be the hero and try to say exactly when it's going to happen. Like, it it makes more sense to just find good assets that have fundamental good drivers and remain bullish on them for a long time. And you can see with things like gold and silver and and and platinum, how they've all hit new all-time highs now um within the last couple of months or so. And uh, you know, the fundamental drivers I think still are there even if there is a repeat.
Now, what I will say is that for something like uranium, this is the monthly chart. I think it is in a constructive pattern heading to new all-time highs. Now, the hard part about that is that if you come from the crypto industry, especially if you come from the TikTok crypto industry, your attention span for investing might be only a few days, a few weeks, some people a few hours, or a few minutes. If you're going to get into an asset class like strategic energy metals, you have to broaden your attention span on how long you're willing to hold something like that. For instance, uranium has been steadily going up since March of 2020, right? Like it's up 600%. Now, that might not sound like a lot if you're, you know, if you really want to um try to make a lot a lot a lot more money in a lot quicker way, right? Like maybe a 7x move over the last six years doesn't really sound like a lot to you. First of all, I think something might be wrong if that's what you think, and maybe you've become desensitized, but that's a good move by most standards.
In fact, you know, when you look at a chart like this from say 2020, I I wonder it might not it doesn't look as bad as the silver chart uh when you compare altcoins to silver. Like if you look if you compare altcoins to silver, altcoins are actually at new lows compared to their 2022 lows. Okay. So, if you compare altcoins to say this uranium ETF or other uranium ETFs, you can see that basically it's at the same altcoins are at the same valuation against uranium that they were at back in 2021 and also at the same valuation that they were at in early 2018. So, it does go to show you that like like you can sit there and pretend like altcoins have been a better investment than some of these metals, but in reality, over a long enough period of time, like they really haven't. In fact, if you had bought an altcoin uh January 2018, you know, you haven't actually outperformed uranium, you know, for the collective altcoin market. In fact, most of those altcoins probably underperformed uranium. And the only reason that the altcoin market is higher is because you've had new altcoins that have come in and taken on the narrative for a little while. So, I do want to caution people against getting, you know, having an opinion about it based on something that's not actually true, right? Like that the reality is is uranium has actually done really, really well. And it was one of my best performing metals last year. In fact, from April of 2025 until going into October, uranium actually rallied. This ETF actually rallied 200%. Now, there's other ETFs, too. Uh, there's, you know, there there's plenty of different ones you can look at. This one rallied from the April low. it rallied about 155%. There's also this one as well uh which rallied from the April low uh 700%. Right? So, there's different ones that you can that you can look at.
But essentially, the the argument that I'm I'm making is that prices have been really low for a really long time, right? Like uranium prices have been trending down since 2011 until 2020, and they only recently started trending up over the last five to six years. What happens when you have low prices for a while is it essentially means that you have a lot of um, I think supply kind of gets behind like there's not as much investment into it because prices are low, right? Like it's not as profitable. But as energy demands continue to soar, there's going to be a growing need to meet those energy demands, and the United States is already uh, you know, they they want the the nuclear industry to grow, as well as other places, I believe, like China, uh, Japan, and and some other places. It is a growing industry, right? It absolutely is.
And I'm going to do something that I don't typically do, and that is look at the news. I know. Let's go ahead and get the collective eye roll out of the way. Um, but it does go to show like if you look at at recently, as recently as January 5th, the US just awarded uh $2.7 billion worth of orders to boost uranium enrichment. So, it it's not I mean, they want this to grow.
By the way, uranium isn't it's not confined just to light water reactors. It's not confined just to these massive power plants that take years to build. Although I think that's a bullish thing too. But there's also something called small modular reactors or SMRs. That's some fellow grad students working on SMRs for their dissertation back in uh back when I graduated. And the the idea around small modular reactors in general and why the nuclear industry as a whole should grow is if there is a town that is cut off from the grid, they don't really have a great way to get connected to electricity. There is this, you know, you can actually ship out an SMR, a small module reactor, to that town, and that SMR can then power the town for basically like a decade. Okay. So, there are use cases, there are growing use cases for the nuclear field, and I think that as our energy demands grow, the price of uranium will increase, especially because I think that the infrastructure is somewhat lagging behind, meaning prices will likely go up.
So, ultimately, when I look at uranium, I I see something that is likely going to go back to all-time highs because we can already see the nuclear field is expanding. It is. Now, could there be a recession that gets in the way temporarily? It's possible, but I can't concern myself with that. Long-term, I think uranium looks constructively bullish. Like, if you look at the technical analysis, like it looks bullish. You have higher highs and higher lows. You also have a prior all-time high that it looks like it's trying to trying to run towards. Keep in mind, gold, silver, platinum, that kind of stuff, it operates on a different cycle. So, I'm not suggesting that because gold did it, uranium has to do it. Absolutely not. But gold already took out the 2011 high back in 2020. And then silver took out the 2011 high in 2025. Platinum also took out the 2011 high. Might have even been the 2008 high. Um, but it recently took it out. I just think you're going to see more of these real tangible assets start to go to their all-time highs.
And so, yes, I am biased. Like, I do I have exposure to uranium, right? I am biased. My background is in nuclear engineering, you know? So, I'm going to have sort of a jaded view on I'm going to have a more biased view on what I think. But I do think nuclear does present a convenient way to solve some of our problems. I had a a professor in grad school for those that are interested in nuclear fusion. And the the funny thing was, I mean, he did his PhD like, you know, 60 years ago at this point, and he said that back then, the idea was that fusion commercially, commercially viable fusion was always 20 years away, and then it always stayed like that, right? Fusion was always 20 years away, at least in a commercially, commercially viable sense. And even today, it's kind of still the the saying that it's it's just 20 years away. Hopefully, we get some breakthroughs there. But in in fission, um, the the main setup is actually two uranium, uranium dioxide, but uranium with Zircaloy cladding. Zircaloy. And on paper, there's actually a lot of other things that make a lot more sense. I mean, you could look at like molten salt reactors, you could look at other types of cladding like silicon carbide, whatever. Um, on paper, a lot of other things make a lot more sense. Uh, in practice, in the real world, this is what has the most amount of experience, and it works, and it's cheap, cheaper. Um, and uranium's kind of at at the forefront of that.
So, fundamentally, uranium seems like it should be bullish. Growing energy demands, the US seems to be pro-nuclear right now. Other parts of the world pro-nuclear because prices have been so low for so long, there's kind of not as much infrastructure as arguably we need because there hasn't been as much investment, meaning prices will likely go up. Here's the thing. When I say that, that doesn't mean it has to happen tomorrow. I could have I could have told you guys the same thing uh in in November of 2021, and while technically the prices didn't really drop that much from that level, it still took a while to get to where we are. So, if you do add some form of uranium to your portfolio, just know that it's more of a long-term investment. It's not something that you should expect to wake up tomorrow and expect it to be up a lot, right? It's more of a long-term hold, uh, in my opinion. And ultimately, I think if you if you're ultimately bullish on, uh, growing energy demands, then for me, it's hard not to also be bullish on nuclear because I do I do think it solves um, a timely problem.
So, those are my views on on uranium. I do personally think it's a good long-term investment. It's not financial advice. I could absolutely be 100% wrong. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe I I wasted my time doing a PhD in nuclear engineering, but I don't think that's the case. I I think it I think long-term uh it's it's fundamentally bullish. And technically, it also looks bullish to me as well over the next three to four years.
If you guys like the content, make sure you subscribe to the channel, give the video a thumbs up, and check out Into the Cryptoverse Premium at into the cryptoverse.com. Make sure you also check out the new website, benjamincowan.com. And if you want to reach out for whatever reason, we have a lot of different things on here. If you want me to come speak at a conference or if you want to do some type of collaboration, I will warn you, you know, if if you're if you're wanting to do some type of collaboration where you want me to shill some altcoin or or something like that, just don't bother, right? Don't waste your time. Uh, it's more for more serious stuff. Um, we're not going to do that. And also, we can talk more about navigating the markets as well if you want more direct contact. So, we'll wrap it up there. Thank you guys for tuning in. Subscribe, give the video a thumbs up, and I'll see you guys next time. Bye.