Brooke Thackray confident "frustrating" commodity will eventually pay off due to global energy demand
As the shock from US President Donald Trump’s global tariffs reaches every corner of the market, uranium producers and investors are sitting on their hands, waiting for clarity in an increasingly uncertain environment for commodities.
But as global demand for nuclear power continues to escalate, Brooke Thackray suggests uranium has a bright future, as long as investors are willing to hold onto an asset that notoriously underperforms in the market.
“I call uranium the Rodney Dangerfield commodity sector, it just can't get any respect. But that's going to change one day,” said Thackray, research analyst at Global X Canada.
Thackray remains confident in the long-term prospects of uranium as countries across the globe look to nuclear power as a source of clean and reliable energy source. But the commodity has hit a rocky patch in 2025, with its futures dropping almost 40 per cent since February 2024, partly due to the uncertainty created from Trump’s sweeping global tariffs. Tariffs on Canadian uranium – which supplies one quarter of American nuclear energy – were first tagged at 25 per cent, then dropped to 10 per cent along with the rest of Canadian energy, creating uncertainty in the sector.
“The long-term prospects for uranium and uranium stocks really haven’t changed,” he said. “In fact, it just keeps getting better all the time. But this is the frustrating part for uranium investors, because they've been watching the uranium stocks not perform well over the last number of months.”
National security concerns have been a major feature of Trump’s tariffs according to Thackray, with uranium a product the administration is deeply worried about. He says these concerns could spur more domestic production of uranium in the US to decrease its reliance on global imports. Domestic production only accounts for five per cent of the uranium fuel used in US nuclear reactors, according to the World Nuclear Association.
However, Thackray says the demand and supply of uranium will remain the same regardless of Trump’s tariffs, noting that Cameco Corp., North America’s largest uranium producer, had previously put plans in place to pass the cost of tariffs onto buyers.
“Cameco actually built into some of their contracts that they were going to pass on any cost of tariffs as they came along to the buyer,” he said. “But it doesn't matter, because now you have the utility company paying for it, or somebody else. It's just a matter of who's paying for it. The same amount of uranium is going to be bought regardless.”
Due to the long-term contracts required to secure colossal nuclear reactor infrastructure projects, investors should not buy uranium with the hopes of short-term gains, says Thackray. According to Thackray, investors should ignore day-to-day price fluctuations, as some nuclear reactors take $10 billion and 10-15 years to build. He adds that uranium is different to oil, which naturally sees declines in the case of a recession – an increasingly likely prospect amid Trump’s global trade conflict.
“Uranium is a very different situation than most other commodities, because it's not very economically sensitive. The supply doesn't change, and the demand doesn't change,” he said. “The US has 94 reactors operating and they need the uranium. They're not going to just cut back on producing power because of tariffs, that's not going to happen.”
Germany’s gradual shift back towards nuclear demonstrates the massive global demand, according to Thackray. He suggests the reliability of nuclear, which operates regardless of the weather, has convinced governments worldwide of the value in nuclear power, a trend that will boost uranium’s profitability to investors in the long-term.
“Most countries have realized at this point in a green transition, you can't have wind and solar as your base load. It just doesn’t work … with nuclear, you just turn this thing on and it keeps going, regardless of if the sun's out or the wind's blowing,” he said. “Even Germany, who is big into solar, they were shutting down all their nuclear plants. It looks like they're in the process of at least keeping some alive for now. So even Germany's realizing that nuclear needs to be part of the solution.”
Thackray points to the late 1990s, when commodity stocks such as uranium faltered amid a fierce push from investors to take advantage of the tech boom, a phenomenon he dubs “shiny ball syndrome.” But at the start of the millennium, commodities began to outperform overpriced tech stocks, which had plummeted as the dot-com bubble burst in 2001.
“Because of the nature of the industry, the demand really hadn't changed that much, supply wasn't changing. But all of a sudden, uranium went from a very low price globally to extremely high,” he said. “We went through a commodity boom and uranium was part of that. It was a realization that we need these products to move forward for society, and it's not all about technology stocks.”
The recent overpricing of AI stocks demonstrates a similar pattern to Thackray, who believes steady commodity stocks will eventually shine as investment into tech dries up. The US dollar has also stumbled recently, with investors looking globally, an indicator to Thackray that the tech industry could fracture in the coming years.
“I don't want to say this can be a tech wreck, but we are starting to see technology stocks underperform,” he said.
To meet the soaring demands for energy to power data centres, tech leaders like Sam Altman of Open AI have begun investing heavily in nuclear, looking primarily at microreactors, which have a much shorter construction phase than traditional reactors. Data centres are expected to consume up to 12 per cent of US electricity by 2028, according to the US Department of Energy.
Thackray says the tech industry’s interest in nuclear boosted the asset’s price for a short period of time, though the swell did not last for long. He also notes the emergence of DeepSeek, as reports suggest the Chinese AI firm is more energy efficient than its American counterparts. But regardless of the company, Thackray says the industry as a whole will continue to pursue nuclear as a solution to its energy demands.
“We saw a little bit of excitement, then it seemed to fade,” he said. “Regardless of which AI platform it's going to be, we're still going to have huge power demands for the future, it's only going to get bigger and bigger over time. And nuclear definitely plays into that.”
