Kopernik Global Investors disclosed during its first-quarter 2026 earnings call that the firm's assets under management rose from approximately $9.4 billion at the start of the year to roughly $10.2 billion, driven primarily by market appreciation. The Global All-Cap strategy will be soft-closed to
Dave Iben, Co-CIO of Kopernik Global Investors and Lead Portfolio Manager of the Global All-Cap strategy. The main thread of this episode: Against the backdrop of the Iran war, oil price shocks, rising interest rates, resurgent inflation, a December monthly deficit of $145 billion, and national debt surpassing $39 trillion, Iben argues three core judgments: "the market is most expensive, but volatility creates opportunity," "passive investing is the real risk," and "in an inflationary era, one should hold scarce and cheap real assets." The most weighty assertion in the entire episode: "From current valuations, it is not an unreasonable expectation for the S&P 500 to record losses in the future; at this moment, investors should instead actively pursue high tracking error." — Dave Iben
Dave Iben believes that the current market environment is more severe than 1929, 1968, and 1999, but market inefficiency means that enormous volatility itself is an opportunity for value investors.
Iben opened by listing a list of dangers: war in Iran, an oil price shock, rising interest rates, resurgent inflation, a December monthly deficit of $145 billion, national debt breaking through $39 trillion and heading toward $40 trillion, and market valuations higher than in 1929, 1968, and 1999—years when "one clearly should not be buying stocks." He cited warnings from Ford's and Honda's CEOs that "China could put them out of business," and mentioned Sam Altman comparing the present to January 2020—the eve of COVID. Iben sarcastically observed that Wall Street's response is "this is a party," while he asks back, "are we up a tree?"
He uses the "tree" metaphor to build a framework: looking at a single tree (e.g., rising oil prices) is the problem; stepping back to the forest level, its relationship with inflation and interest rates becomes clearer; stepping back further to the cloud level to view the entire ecosystem, many big problems are only a very small part of the overall picture. From this he derives his operating philosophy:
> "The market's not efficient. There are two sides of every coin. Where there are challenges, there are opportunities."
> That is: the market is not efficient; there are two sides to every coin; wherever there are challenges, there are opportunities.
Supporting this judgment is a set of volatility cases he personally traded:
His conclusion is:
> "Buying at the right price is everything."
> That is: buying at the right price is everything.
Note: Iben uses retrospective success cases to argue for the effectiveness of the volatility strategy (Axia, Korea, Valterra, etc., are all profitable holdings). This is a victorious narrative from the holder's side and does not show losing cases under the same strategy; readers should be aware that this perspective is inherently selective.
Dave Iben argues that passive investing has driven massive amounts of capital into a handful of stocks and pushed indices to historically extreme levels, while the "tracking error" the market universally fears is precisely the tool for surviving the inevitable correction.
Iben calls out four beliefs the market holds with unshakable conviction: that passive is a superior strategy, that tracking error is a risk, that "this time is different," and that the Fed put will always backstop the market. He believes the efficient market hypothesis is "crazy in itself" — not only is information never distributed equally, but career risk further distorts rationality: "If something is good for the portfolio but bad for your career, what does a rational person do?"
The one-way influx of passive capital is merely a bull-market phenomenon. Holding the index is naturally comfortable while money is pouring in; once momentum reverses, the consequences are "catastrophic." Iben offers a quantitative judgment:
> "History and logic have both shown that from current valuations, losses would not be an unreasonable expectation for the S&P 500 [index] going forward."
> In other words: whether by history or by logic, from current valuations, it would not be an unreasonable expectation for the S&P 500 to post losses going forward.
He uses the Buffett Indicator as supporting evidence: the stock market's capitalization as a share of the economy is "far beyond anything seen before," and the economy is the foundation that must ultimately support these valuations — buyers must be on guard. Precisely because passive capital has concentrated into a few stocks, low tracking error in fact means holding an overvalued index — in the crashes of 1929, 1973, 1999, and 2008, it was those who "avoided the index" who survived.
To the "this time is different" narrative, Iben responds with the history of innovation: canals, railroads, the assembly line, the telephone, radio, semiconductors, the internet — each one utterly transformed society, and each was accompanied by a massive crash within its boom-bust cycle. AI is not exempt:
> "The question isn't whether AI is real. It certainly is. It's at what price and what are the repercussions."
> In other words: the question is not whether AI is real — it certainly is; the question is at what price to buy, and what consequences will follow.
As for the Fed put, it has worked without fail for the past 45 years, but if printing money could truly solve everything, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Weimar Germany, and Argentina would long ago have been the best investment destinations. He cites the "outwardly strong, inwardly hollow old oak" in Atlas Shrugged, Taleb's Antifragile, and Roman history to argue that the long-term outcome of accumulated debt and deficits is internal decay. The resulting action implication is direct: one should now actively move as far away from the index as possible — the valuations at the time of the 1929, 1973, 1999, and 2008 crashes were all lower than today's.
Dave Iben believes that the pace of currency depreciation has persisted and accelerated throughout his entire career, and that investment must shift toward scarce, essential, intrinsically valuable, and inexpensive physical assets.
Jim Grant's calculation is cited as an anchor: at the Fed's 2% inflation target, prices rise 5-fold over a lifetime; actual inflation is closer to 3% and accelerating. Iben therefore argues:
> "I think owning scarce, valuable assets are an important thing to do because the currency has been losing value my entire life and is increasingly doing so now."
The transmission mechanism of inflation comes from the Cantillon effect: money is always perceived first at its source, then spreads along the channel — first entering stocks and bonds, then flowing into gold, then migrating to platinum, copper, and nickel. Iben says what he has always done is "buy before the Cantillon wave arrives, trim at the crest, and add back afterward." Specific directions include: Ukrainian food producers, power generation and transmission/distribution companies, platinum (catalytic converter demand), mobile phone companies ("people would rather have a phone than eat"), Asian rail concessions, software companies with pulled-back valuations, a newly established health insurance position, and copper.
Agriculture and forestry are what he emphasizes this cycle as "unrecognized value": over the past 50 years, forestland area has declined while the money supply has increased roughly 100-fold and population has grown 3-fold; compared with the Nasdaq, timber prices have "barely moved." Iben believes this resembles gold a few years ago — value not yet confirmed by the market, but supply-demand fundamentals already pointing to scarcity. At the portfolio level, against a backdrop of the market being "the most expensive in human history," half of the stocks in the portfolio trade below book value, the overall price/cash flow is 40% cheaper than the market, and price/sales is only one-quarter of the market. Specific actions: added to Kazatomprom in January, trimmed at higher levels in March; sold one energy company that hit multi-year highs in January and bought another near its lows; took profits from some metals and rotated into forest products.
The final layer is diversification. In a Middle East conflict, oil companies benefit and chemicals are hurt; in a different scenario, Asia is hurt and Latin America benefits. Iben believes that in a noise-dense macro environment, "buying cheap + geographic diversification" is itself a competitive advantage, but he also attaches a condition: "If we are right, holding these assets is very rewarding; precisely for that reason, diversification is necessary." This is the uncertainty explicitly retained in the original text.
| Target | Guest Stance (Bullish/Risk Warning/Neutral) | Key Data |
|---|---|---|
| Axia (AXIA Energia SA, formerly Eletrobras) | Bullish | Bought after the 2013 crash, has tripled to date; after swing trading, it is the most profitable position |
| Valterra Platinum Limited | Bullish | Bought after a long drawdown, has tripled to date |
| MEG Energy | Bullish (has been acquired, repurchased early this year) | Bought a year ago when oil prices were depressed, acquired by Cenovus |
| Cenovus Energy Inc. | Not specified (mentioned as the acquirer) | After acquiring MEG, Iben bought back the surviving entity early this year |
| Range Resources Corp | Bullish | $95 → bought at $18 → continued adding at $2 |
| Cameco Corporation | Neutral to cautious (has fully exited, still acknowledges quality) | Initiated at $5, exited at $50; at a uranium price of $125, "essentially fully priced" |
| NAC Kazatomprom JSC | Bullish | Added in January, trimmed at highs in March |
| NexGen Energy Ltd | Not specified (independent price action, offers swing trading opportunities) | Different rhythm from other uranium stocks |
1. "From current valuations, a loss in the S&P 500 is the reasonable expectation; at this moment, investors should instead pursue high tracking error — the farther they move from the index, the better." — Dave Iben (Meaning: low tracking error means holding an overvalued index; that is the real risk.)
2. "Every major innovation (canals, railroads, semiconductors, the internet) has been accompanied by a massive crash; the question with AI has never been whether it is real, but the price and the consequences." — Dave Iben (Meaning: the innovation is real, but so is the cost of the bubble.)