Before Nvidia, There Was This Bottleneck

Editor’s Note: Every tech boom creates a new wave of superstar companies. But, as we talked about in yesterday’s issue, the biggest early fortunes often come from a different place entirely: the bottlenecks.

When demand for a new technology explodes faster than supply can keep up, the companies controlling those choke points can see extraordinary gains.

My colleague Eric Fry has been studying this pattern for decades. He has a knack for spotting the economic pressure points where massive profits tend to emerge.

In the essay below, Eric explains how a little-remembered metals shortage during the dot-com boom helped fuel huge gains in mining stocks – and why a similar dynamic could now be unfolding in the AI Revolution.

Eric will dive deeper into this opportunity during FutureProof 2026, a free event happening March 18 at 1 p.m. ET, where he’ll explain why new shortages in metals, electricity, and memory could shape the next phase of the AI boom. You can reserve your spot here.

People took out thousands of dollars in cash in fear that ATMs wouldn’t work.

Thousands canceled flights because they believed planes might simply fall out of the sky.

Stores across the globe sold out of generators, bottled water, and cans of Spam.

For younger folks, it may sound crazy, but the panic over the so-called Y2K bug was very real.

At the turn of the millennium, people around the world feared computers would crash on January 1, 2000 — misreading the “00” date as 1900 instead of 2000.

The problem was real. And real money was spent to solve it.

The Clinton administration said in December 1999 that preparing the U.S. for Y2K was probably “the single largest technology management challenge in history.”

Researchers at Gartner estimate the global cost of Y2K remediation — across governments and private companies — totaled between $300 billion and $600 billion.

In the end, the remediation worked. Aside from a few minor glitches (and perhaps a lingering surplus of canned Spam), the world’s technology systems continued running smoothly.

But while the public worried about computers crashing…

… another problem was quietly forming behind the scenes.

We had to move so quickly at the turn of the century largely because of the tech boom leading up to it.

The dot-com surge triggered a massive buildout of internet infrastructure, and that buildout required enormous quantities of raw materials.

So while consumers were stockpiling supplies…

… tech companies were scrambling to secure metals.

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the tech boom triggered a surge in demand for critical materials used in electronics and networking equipment:

• Copper – to carry electricity and data
• Tin – used in electronic soldering
• Gold – used in corrosion-resistant connectors
• Rare earth elements – used in disk drives, displays, and fiber optics

The explosion of internet infrastructure, personal computers, and networking hardware meant the world suddenly needed far more metals than usual.

But mining and refining capacity couldn’t expand overnight.

The result was a classic supply bottleneck.

Prices for semiconductors and other hardware spiked. Companies like Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), Intel Corp. (INTC), and Dell Technologies Inc. (DELL) faced growing lead-time issues that slowed product rollouts.

But this metals shortage also created hidden investment opportunities.

Investors who anticipated which resources would become scarce had the chance to profit in extraordinary ways, much like investors who recently benefited from Nvidia Corp.’s (NVDA) nearly 1,000% gains during the AI compute bottleneck.

From 1998 to 2001, I recommended four mining stocks to my readers that went on to generate remarkable gains. These companies became the quiet winners of the late-1990s tech boom.

Today, let’s take a closer look at them — and how identifying a supply bottleneck early created enormous upside.

Then I’ll show you how this same profit-making “bottleneck” cycle is unfolding again thanks to AI… and where investors still have time to position themselves.

Let’s take a look…

The Copper Bottleneck of the Internet Boom

Back during the dot-com era, Antofagasta plc (ANTO.L) was not yet the global copper giant it is today.

In the mid-1990s, the company was still a diversified Chilean holding company involved in railways, finance, and industrial businesses.

But in 1996, Antofagasta spun off many of its non-mining assets into Quiñenco SA, one of Chile’s largest conglomerates.

That move transformed Antofagasta into a copper-focused mining company — just as the internet boom was beginning to drive enormous demand for the metal.

During the late 1990s, the company began developing the massive Los Pelambres copper mine in Chile’s Coquimbo Region. Construction started in 1997. Initial production began in 1999. By 2001, the mine had reached full capacity.

Los Pelambres quickly transformed Antofagasta from a relatively small mining group into a major global copper producer. In the early 2000s, the mine accounted for roughly three-quarters of the company’s revenue.

I recommended Antofagasta to my readers on December 18, 1998 — about a year before the mine began production.

Over the next three years, the stock soared 205%, while the S&P 500 was essentially flat.

Over six years, Antofagasta delivered an astonishing 778% gain, while the S&P continued to nurse its losses, down 27%!

Antofagasta built capacity during the investment phase of the 1990s, and then benefited enormously once the metals bottleneck tightened.

But it wasn’t the only copper producer positioned to win.

While tech companies were building the internet, companies like Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (FCX) were supplying the physical materials that made the emerging digital world possible.

Freeport’s crown jewel was the Grasberg Mine in Indonesia, one of the most important copper and gold mines on Earth. 

Because Grasberg was already operating at scale, Freeport could immediately ramp up production as demand surged. The company didn’t need to build new capacity to benefit from the bottleneck — it simply needed to keep producing.

I recommended Freeport to my readers on April 26, 1999.

Over the next three years, the stock rose 37%, while the S&P 500 slumped 18%.

Over six years, Freeport soared 193%, while the broader market lost 7%.

Copper wasn’t the only opportunity of the time…