There is a lot of money to be made in electric vehicles—just not in the stocks of EV makers such as Tesla, according to Greenlight Capital hedge-fund manager David Einhorn.
Einhorn presented at the Sohn Investment Conference Wednesday. His preferred way to play the EV boom is through copper. In a tweet sent out by the conference organizers, Einhorn explained: “Buy copper. EVs have [four times] the copper content of [gas-powered] vehicles. Chargers, solar panels, and wind power all require lots of copper, and Goldman predicts 5 [million] tons of demand growth by 2029.”
The world uses roughly 25 million metric tons of copper a year. The increase, depending on whether Einhorn was taking about metric or short tons, is about 16% to 20% of total demand. That works out to roughly 2% average annual demand growth a year.