Traxys CEO, Mark Kristoff, joined the 2026 FT Live’s Commodities Global Summit to discuss the current geopolitics of supply, global trade, and the landscape surrounding copper.

Through discussions with industry experts—including Siavosh Arasteh, Gracelin Baskaran, PhD, Brian Menell, and Graeme Train in the “Strategic Metals and the Geopolitics of Supply” panel, as well as Kostas Bintas, Ivan Petev, Christopher Kulukundis, and Bold Baatar in “The Great Copper Rush”—both expertly moderated by Camilla Hodgson—Mark underscored the heightened volatility in trading driven by the pandemic and rapid technological advancements:

I think what we're coming back to is a new phenomenon, post-Covid, where the supply chain constraints really demonstrated to many consumers that it is a very complex supply chain. It takes a lot of time to bring something from Kazakhstan to Chicago. And the customers were very much used to picking up the phone and saying, “I need a truckload tomorrow.” Covid exposed all those frailties.

The knock on of different metals in the AI thematic is important. If I had told you 24 months ago that tungsten would be up tenfold, you would have taken me out of this room in a straitjacket. But this is the reality of the markets that we live in.

Both panels underscored the importance of foresight and timely action, as the future of trading approaches faster every day.

See: https://commodities.live.ft.com/