The world’s biggest mining companies have added close to half a trillion dollars to their valuations this year, fuelled by a surge in the prices of precious and base metals triggered by heightened geopolitical tensions.

The top 50 listed mining companies have added $476bn to their combined market capitalisations over the past month, a rise of about 20 per cent, according to S&P Capital IQ data.

Some of the biggest winners include the diversified miners Rio Tinto and Glencore, which are again discussing a potential $260bn megamerger, as well as Sydney-listed BHP and the Chinese group Zijin Mining.

Gold broke through $5,300 per troy ounce on Wednesday, while silver breached $100 for the first time last week. Copper and tin have also hit record highs this month.

The influx of money into mining equities and physical metal such as gold bars comes as investors look for reliable stores of value amid global upheaval set off by US President Donald Trump’s military and tariff threats, as well as his campaign against Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell.

The rush for safe havens has come amid investor concern about a weakening dollar, which this week hit its lowest level in four years against a basket of currencies.

“People are scared,” said Tom Price, analyst at Panmure Liberum, adding that investors were “replacing their US dollar exposure with commodity exposure. I’ve never seen anything like this before, not on this scale.”

Gold has hit a series of record highs in recent weeks, propelled by Trump’s military and tariff threats against European allies over Greenland and the launch by the Department of Justice of a criminal probe into Powell.

Copper prices have been boosted by a wave of relentless demand for the grid infrastructure and data centres needed to power the AI boom.

The share prices of more than 100 separate metals and mining companies have more than doubled since the start of January, according to S&P Capital IQ.

Of MSCI’s 156 sector equities indices, the top three performers this year are all in the metals sector.

The surge follows a strong 2025 for mining stocks, with the combined market capitalisation for a group of almost 2,400 companies rising more than 80 per cent in December compared with the same month a year before, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

James Hayter, chief investment officer at Orion Resource Equities, said a growing expectation among investors that metals prices would continue to rise over the medium to long term was driving “equity outperformance”.

He added that the dynamic was likely to continue even if precious and base metals prices pulled back from their recent record peaks.

“It doesn’t take much of a rotation from global asset managers into our sector to have a really outsized impact” given that mining had been “unloved and underinvested in” for years, he said.

John Meyer, an analyst at SP Angel, said mining equities were still “lagging” behind the “extraordinary and unprecedented” rise in gold, silver, copper and other metals this month.

He added that many miners were still not “being particularly well valued. There’s still a lot more catching up to do.”

Analysts warned that the sector still required significant capital. They also noted that mining companies’ share prices were influenced by uncertainty over their ability to open and operate sites amid geopolitical upheaval.

Enrique Dans, a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said global tensions had increased the “volatility premium across the sector”, adding that the share prices of some miners that were years away from production were experiencing “very sharp moves”.

Price of Panmure Liberum said speculators were entering the sector who were “motivated to exit quickly” if spooked, adding that such moves could risk triggering “massive corrections after this massive rally”.

Even experienced commodity investors were now asking about “exit plans” and “life beyond the [price] spike”, he said.

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