Stock Talk - Living in a Material World: After AI (Dot-Com), What Might Be Next? Stock Talk Update August 28, 2026

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

Artificial intelligence may be the biggest technology story in the market — but the next major investment opportunity connected to AI may not be another AI stock.   As companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta spend hundreds of billions of dollars building AI infrastructure and data centers, they're also creating enormous demand for something much more physical: electricity, copper, steel, transformers, natural gas, uranium, electrical equipment and the infrastructure needed to connect it all.   So what happens if the AI boom eventually creates a materials boom?   In this episode of Stock Talk, we look back at what happened after technology stopped dominating the market around the dot-com era and examine whether investors could be seeing the early stages of another major shift in market leadership.   After the Nasdaq peaked in 2000, some of the strongest investments of the following years weren't technology companies. Copper, gold, mining companies, materials and commodity-producing countries experienced enormous gains as China's rapid industrialization created a massive new source of global demand.   Today's situation is different — but there may be an important similarity.   AI data centers require enormous amounts of electricity. That means additional power generation, transmission lines, transformers, copper, steel and other physical infrastructure.   According to the International Energy Agency, global data-center electricity consumption was approximately 415 terawatt-hours in 2024 and could reach roughly 945 terawatt-hours by 2030 under its Base Case. In this video, we explore: Why market leadership changed dramatically after the dot-com boom What created the commodity supercycle of the 2000s Why copper prices rose dramatically during that period How AI data centers are changing global electricity demand Why copper, power infrastructure, uranium, natural gas and electrical equipment could become increasingly important Why materials have historically underperformed the broader market for years What the XLB Materials ETF may be telling investors How limited mining investment could affect future commodity supply Why AI could eventually become as much an infrastructure story as a technology story What investors should watch for if market leadership begins to change The important takeaway isn't that technology stocks have to collapse or that commodities are guaranteed to enter another supercycle.   It's that market leadership changes.   The companies and sectors that dominated one investment cycle don't necessarily dominate the next. And if artificial intelligence continues growing, the next major investment story may not simply be the companies building AI.   It may be the companies supplying the materials, electricity and infrastructure required to build the AI economy.   If you're approaching retirement or you're already retired and you'd like someone to review your investments, income needs, risk, and how those pieces fit together with your retirement strategy, contact Oak Harvest Financial Group.   There’s no obligation. We’ll learn more about your goals, income needs, and concerns and help you understand whether there may be opportunities to improve your retirement plan. https://click2retire.com/lets-connect   And if you enjoy videos that make markets, investing, and retirement easier to understand, subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/@OakHarvestStockTalk?sub_confirmation=1   This content is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered individualized investment, tax or financial advice. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal.

Investors for close to two years here at Oak Carvis and on Stock Talk, we've spent a lot of time talking about artificial intelligence. AI chips, data centers, semiconductors, electricity, and the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent to build all of it. We've talked about who wins, who loses, who spends the money, and who gets paid. But today, I want to ask a different question. I want to ask, what comes after AI? Now, I'm not saying the AI cycle is ending tomorrow,

and not saying the AI boom is about to disappear. I'm asking a question investors should always be willing to ask when one group of stocks has been leading for a long time. If today's winners eventually slow down, where might be the next leadership and where might the money go? Because I'm old enough to have seen this movie before. Around the year 2000, technology was the story. Investors could barely talk about anything else.

Internet stocks, computers, networking equipment, semiconductors. Technology and technology stocks seem like future and in many ways they were. Then technology stocks stopped leading, but the money didn't disappear, it moved. And some of the biggest winners over the next several years weren't companies selling computers, software, or semiconductors. They were companies and countries tied to copper, steel, oil, gold, chemicals, mining equipment, and other things you can actually touch. We went from technology boom into what I want to call a material world. And there's some reasons today to start

watching that world again because here's the twist in the center of this video. The next big investment story connected to AI might not be another AI company and maybe other things AI companies are forced to buy. Power, copper, steel, natural gas, uranium, electrical equipment. So maybe the next important question isn't only who wins AI. Maybe it becomes what does AI have to buy? That's the question we're going to follow today. And to understand why it matters, we need to go back to the last time technology dominated the market. Before we do that, let me make one thing clear. I'm not predicting another dot-com crash. Today's technology companies are very different. Their profits are the difference. Their balance sheets are different. The economy is different. The point of looking back at 2000

isn't to predict another 2000 and the dot-com crash. The point is to understand what can happen when investors begin looking beyond the group that led the last cycle. Because if you were an investor in early 2000s and kept staring only at technology, companies that had won during the late 1990s, you missed some very big moves happening somewhere else. And investors, that's why today it's still worth studying. Basic Materials have recently started showing better relative strengths at the same time semiconductor leadership has cooled off. Jesse Colombo's in the Bubble report has pointed out that the XLB, that's the S&P 500 Materials ETF, has been sitting near one of its weakest

relative levels, first the S&P 500, since around, you guessed it, the year 2000. That tells us that the gap between these parts of the market has become very wide. And when something has lagged for that long, while the forces that could drive future demand are changing, I start paying attention. There are three clues that we need to follow. First, what happened after technology stopped leading around 2000? Second, what created the last great commodity boom? And third, why AI may be helping create a new demand story today. That third clue is where this story gets interesting.

Let's start with the history. The NASDAQ peaked on March 10, 2000. Before that peak, the Federal Reserve had already been raising interest rates. Fed funds rate had moved from around 4 and 3 quarters in mid-1999 to 6.5% by May of 2000. Money was becoming more expensive, and that put pressure on companies where investors were paying high prices today for profits they hoped would arrive years later. Technology got hit hard. The NASDAQ eventually suffered a peak to trough decline. of roughly 74%. I lived through that. It was not fun. Semineconductors were hit especially hard, but something important was happening underneath the headlines. Investors started looking somewhere else. They looked for earnings. They looked for cash flow. They looked for businesses and markets that hadn't already been priced as if everything had to go right. Banks improved,

industrials improved, international markets improved, commodity-producing countries, they benefited. and Materials entered a powerful cycle. That brings us to our first chart. In the Bubble Bowl report dated August 9th of this year, take a look at this long-term chart of the XLB. Once again, that's the Materials Select Spider ETF. Two large advances stand out. One came during the commodity room of 2000,

another came after the COVID inflation shot. In both periods, the XLB rose roughly two and a half times from its starting level. But focused on the first move. It happened during a period. when investors were being forced to look beyond technology companies that had dominated the previous cycle. That gives us the next question. Why materials? Why copper? Why oil? Why steel? Why mining? What has changed? One major answer was China. China joined the World Trade Organization in late 2001 and then it began building at incredible record speed

factories, roads, rails power plants, apartments, buildings, cities and all the construction required it required physical materials. Copper for wiring, steel and iron core for buildings, energy to run factories, cement and machinery to build infrastructure, demand took off. Copper gives us a good picture of what happened overseas. The average price of copper was around 71 cents a pound in 2002. By 2006, it had averaged roughly $3.5. In 2007, it was around $3.23. That's more than four times the 2002 price. And the reason was simple. Demand changed faster than supply could respond.

Here's an easy way to picture it. Imagine you only own the hardware store in a growing town. Most months, you sell about 20 generators, so you keep 25 in stock. Then a huge storm rolls around, power goes out. Suddenly, 200 people walk into your store looking for a generator. The demand changes immediately. But we can't call the factory and have 200 new generators appear 10 minutes later. That gap changes the value of the supply you already have. commodities can work the same way. Demand can move awfully fast. Supply usually moves much slower.

You can make another copy of a piece of software almost instantaneously, but you can't make another copper mine. A major mine can take years to discover, permit, finance, build, and bring to production. That slow supply response is one reason commodity cycles can become much bigger and last much longer than most people expect. The last great commodity cycle had one enormous demand engine behind it. That was China, largely China building for the Olympics in June of 2008.

The question today is whether the next cycle could have several engines running at the same time. This is where the story starts to look different than the early 2000s. A future commodity cycle doesn't need another China. It could come from something broader. De-globalization, electrification, defense spending, domestic manufacturing, energy security, new supply chains, growing, emerging, economies and artificial intelligence, all at the same time. Janice Henderson has argued that mining capital spending remains low compared to the long-term history. That matters because higher demand is one thing. Higher demand hitting an industry that hasn't built enough new supply is something

else. We've already seen some early signs that investors are paying more attention to natural resources. The S&P Global Natural Resource Index returned almost 29.7% last year in 2025. compared with roughly 22.9% from the MSC All-World Country Index. One year doesn't make a super cycle, but it does give us another piece of evidence to watch. Now we get to the connection that matters most. Most investors still think about AI as a digital story. Semiconductor chips, software, cloud computing, models, data. But AI lives in a digital world while eating from the physical world.

That physical appetite may be where the next chapter develops. chapter develops. Okay, let's put another chart on the screen. According to the IEA, Global Data Center electrical use, it was around 415 terawatt hours in 2024. In its base case, the IEA projects that number could reach roughly 945 terawatts by 2030. That's more than double in only six years. The IEA says that data center electricity demand could grow around 15, 15, 15%, 15%, each year from 2024 through 2030. Electricity use from accelerated servers. The hardware most closely tied to AI is projected to grow even faster at around 30% per year.

Now think about that. Think about what it means outside the computer. The electricity has to come from somewhere. The transmission lines have to be built. Transformers have to be made. Power generation has to be added. Copper has to be mined and processed. Natural gas infrastructure may need to expand. Nuclear power power power power.

plants may even need to be built having uranium, and the grid itself has to be able to carry the load. That gives us the heart of the thesis in one line. AI spending creates power demand. Power demand forces grid investment. Grid investment consumes materials, and when supply can't respond fast enough, prices can move higher. That's the chain we're watching. And it changes the investment question. Instead of only asking which AI company gets the biggest piece of the boom, ask what all of those companies may be competing to buy. Think about the biggest technology companies in the world, all pushing into the same direction. Microsoft wants more computing power. Amazon wants more computing power. Google wants more computing power. Meta wants more computing power. Others out there,

they all want more computing power. They may need to compete for chips, software models, and cloud services. But eventually, all of them run into the same physical world, the same electrical grids, the same power equipment, the same copper markets, same construction resources. And at that point, technology race starts becoming a infrastructure race. That's the part I think deserves more attention. History gives us a reason to take that possibility very seriously. Let's put our third visual on the screen. So looking at all the above data and returns, our point isn't that this history must have to repeat. The point is to see how dramatically market leadership changed. Over this general period, the S&P 500,

was up only about 20%. The NASDAQ was still down roughly 35%. Semiconductors were down around 60%. Now look at some of the other areas. US materials roughly doubled. Australia gained around 150%. Brazil climbed around 400%. Chile gained 250%.

Gold rose 220% and copper gained 350%. Investors, global miners, were up roughly 300% or more. Those investments didn't go up a straight line, however. There were painful corrections along the way. Copper had large drawdowns. Mining stocks also saw large drawdowns during the time. Emerging markets can be very volatile, but step back from the short-term swings and look at the bigger picture. The assets that work best after the technology boom looked very different from the assets that worked best during the technology boom. That's why I keep coming back to this idea. The winner of one cycle doesn't

have to be the winner in the next one. That brings us to our final chart. This chart compares the XLB, that's the materials sector, with the S&P 500. Everyone, materials have badly underperform the broader U.S. stock market for roughly 17 years. They're now sitting near one of their weakest relative positions since around the beginning of the last major commodity cycle. What makes this interesting isn't simply that materials have lagged. It's that they've lagged while the world may be starting to demand more of what these companies produce. Technology has enjoyed years of strong performance. Materials have spent years being ignored.

And at the same time, AI, grid investment, manufacturing, defense, energy security, and electrification may all be increasing demand for physical resources. That combination is what makes this worth watching. Now, there's one important reason why we shouldn't simply just copy 2002 through 2008 playbook. The old commodity super cycle was built around one thing.

That was China. Investors back then, China was urbanizing. China was industrializing, China was building at a pace the world had rarely seen. The exact story isn't coming back. China's growth has slowed. Its urbanization boom is much more mature, and it has excess capacity and several parts of its economy. So a new cycle would need a different engine or several engines, and that may be what makes today so interesting.

AI infrastructure, electrical grids, defense spending, domestic manufacturing, energy security, new supply chains, nuclear power, natural gas, and growing emerging economies. The old story was pretty simple. China builds, commodities rise. The next story could be this. The world builds commodity rise. Investors, that's a far broader story and more powerful story,

and there's something special about it. It's kind of ironic. For decades, technology made the economy feel less physical. Software moved things onto screens. Streaming replaced physical media, cloud computing moved equipment out of the office. Apps replaced tools that once sat on her desk, the economy became more digital. Then along comes artificial intelligence.

One of the most advanced technologies ever created. And what does it need? It needs power plants. It needs wires. It needs copper, steel, natural gas, uranium concrete buildings. The digital boom may create a physical boom. If you enjoyed looking at the markets this way, not just asking what's moving today,

but trying to understand what might matter next. Hit the subscribe button and tap the bell. Think of the bell as our little market alarm. If copper suddenly starts trading like an AI stock, we may need it. And unlike most things on Wall Street, the bell doesn't charge a management fee. Now, there's still an important reason to stay flexible. This whole idea could weaken. AI spending could slow.

AI systems could become much more energy efficient. Recession could produce demand. China could further weaken. New mines and new power supply could arrive faster than the most before. expect. So the goal here isn't to decide today that materials have to be the next big winner. The goal is to know what evidence matters. Good investing isn't about pretending we know exactly what happens next. It's about building a framework that helps us recognize when the story is changing. So here's the big takeaway. For

the last few years, investors have spent a lot of time trying to identify the next big winners from artificial intelligence. That still matters, but as this cycle matures, we should also pay attention to the physical side of the story. materials relative to the broader market, copper mining stocks, power demand, the electrical grid. Because if AI keeps growing, it may pull an enormous amount of capital into areas most people don't think about when they hear the words, artificial intelligence. That's what history teaches us to watch. Not because history repeats perfectly, it doesn't, but because capital markets move,

leadership changes, and investors who assume the same part of the market will lead, forever can get caught looking backward. That brings the story back to something much bigger than copper or AI. Is your financial plan built around the idea that today's winners will always stay that way and stay on top, or is it built to handle a world or market leadership changes? Because that's what markets do. Different sectors lead at different times, different asset classes come in and out of favor. Interest rates change, inflation changes, tax laws change, and your income needs change as you move through retirement.

Your retirement plan shouldn't depend on a perfect, plan of guessing which sector leads next. It should be built around your income needs, your risk level, your tax situation, your time horizon, and how all those pieces work together when markets change. So if you're approaching retirement, already retired, or simply wondering whether your portfolio is built for the market that may be coming instead of the market we just had, give Oak Carvis Financial Group a call. We can help you look at how your investments fit into a bigger retirement picture, how much risk you're actually taking, where your income will come from and whether your plan is prepared for more than one type of market environment.

Because the goal isn't to perfectly predict what comes after AI, the goal is to build a plan that doesn't require you to. And after spending years living in a digital world, we may be heading back toward a material world. Great technology changes the world. But sometimes, the next great investment isn't the technology itself. It's the material needed to build a new world. All content contained with an Oak Harvest podcast expresses the views of the speaker and is for informational purposes only. It is based on information believed to be reliable when created, but any cited data, indicators, statistics, or other sources are not guaranteed. The views and opinions expressed herein may change without notice. Strategies and ideas discussed

may not be right for you, and nothing in this podcast should be considered as personalized investment, tax or legal advice, or an offer or solicitation to buy or sell securities. Indexes such as the S&P 500 are not available for direct investment, and your investment results may differ when compared to an index. Specific portfolio actions or strategies discussed will not apply to all client portfolios. Investing involves the risk of loss, and past performance is not indicative of future results.