The Opportunities In Energy Minerals
Lobo Tiggre, AKA Louis James, Founder and Editor of the newsletter The Independent Speculator joins me for a look into the energy minerals space. These metals have garnered a lot of attention over the past 2 years. We focus on the individual minerals that Lobo thinks have the best opportunity to continue to move and the ones to shy away from.
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I’ve got a 2001 diesel VW Beetle. I can go 500 MILES on one tank of diesel. There is no battery driven car on the market that can match this for the price. And that’s with the air condition running full blast. For cold or extreme hot weather like here in Southwest Texas there in NO ELECTRIC car that can match it.
I plan to buy a Nissan Leaf for puttering around the city for grocery shopping, doctor appts, etc. Beyond that? FORGET IT.
There has to be a massive shift in battery technology so that it would be found in EVERY CAR and AFFORDABLE for me to get excited.
It won’t take batteries in every car to make a huge shift in the energy metals. Even getting to 20%-30% penetration over the next decade would be massive for Lithium, Cobalt, Nickel, Graphite, Manganese and even Copper & Silver for wiring electronics.
Many of the Asian mandates are for Electric cars, Electric Buses, and eBikes. Most of the major Auto companies including VW are on board with getting a certain penetration in the EV marketplace.
What Do Tesla, Apple and SoftBank Have in Common? They’re All Hot for Lithium
Tech companies, car makers rush to secure future supplies of key battery components
By Amrith Ramkumar
Updated May 17, 2018
Global carmakers racing for Lithium
by Dan Wilkie – 18/04/2018
“While China is the clear market leader in the consumer take-up of electric vehicles, with more than 1.3 million battery-powered cars on the road and a wide range of manufacturers, major carmakers are converging on the scene.”
“In February, luxury German automaker BMW announced it had entered a joint venture with China’s Great Wall Motor Co, as part of its plans to introduce 25 electrified models to market by 2025.”
“Ford Motor Company, the United States’ second largest carmaker, is planning to spend $US11 billion ($14.3 billion) developing a range of 40 hybrid and fully electric vehicles by 2022.”
“Toyota has pledged to offer more than 10 new electric models to its line-up by the early 2020s, partnering with electronics giant Panasonic to develop batteries.”
“Nissan has also pledged to sell 1 million electric vehicles by 2022, while Hyundai Motor Company and its affiliate Kia Motors plan to release 38 green models by 2025, using a variety of new technologies, including battery power.”
“Among luxury manufacturers, BMW is not alone, with Audi planning to launch 20 electric vehicle models by 2025 in collaboration with Porsche, and Daimler AG investing €10 billion in electric and hybrid technology.”
“Volvo has said it will introduce five electric models between 2019 and 2021, and move away from building vehicles that only have an internal combustion engine.”
“The Swedish carmaker, owned by China’s Geely, will also continue to introduce various forms of hybrid engines to its petrol and diesel-powered model range.”
China’s CATL to supply car batteries to Nissan and Renault
Deal smooths auto makers’ entry into growing Chinese electric vehicle market
Nikkei staff – May 11, 2018
VW doubles its electric vehicle battery contracts to $48 billion
Fred Lambert
– May. 4th 2018
https://electrek.co/2018/05/04/vw-doubles-electric-vehicle-battery-contracts-billion/
The global electric-vehicle market is amped up and on the rise
May 2018 – By Patrick Hertzke, Nicolai Müller, Stephanie Schenk, and Ting Wu
“Last year, for the first time, global sales of new electric vehicles (EVs)1 passed a million units (Exhibit 1), according to McKinsey’s Electric Vehicle Index (see sidebar, “What is the Electric Vehicle Index?”). Under the current growth trajectory, EV producers could almost quadruple that achievement by 2020, moving 4.5 million units, around 5 percent of the overall global light-vehicle market.”
This is the only chart Lithium price bears need see
Frik Els | Apr. 17, 2018
Billionaire Sanjeev Gupta plans Australia’s First Battery Plant
May 23 2018 – by Simon Evans
“British billionaire Sanjeev Gupta is accelerating plans to become Australia’s first large-scale manufacturer of lithium household storage batteries to take advantage of booming demand and to stop the country squandering another competitive advantage.”
It’s been nuts the way Cobalt stocks have been performing
#Battery Materials – Day 1 Commodity focus:
121 Mining Investment Hong Kong – May 17, 2018 #Panel #VIDEO
Lithium Batteries – from Nemaska Lithium website:
http://www.nemaskalithium.com/en/lithium-supply/lithium-batteries/
Pilbara Mineras Corporate Presenation (note the huge offtake agreements with manufacturers for a clue as to where things are trending).
http://www.pilbaraminerals.com.au/site/PDF/2145_0/CorporatePresentationMay2018
Pilbara Minerals to ship first spodumene to China in August
by Reuters Resources – Thur (19/04/2018)
https://www.acbr.com.au/pilbara-minerals-ship-first-spodumene-china-august
Check out slides 1-14 on this Galaxy Resource Corporate Presentation to get the facts on the current market dynamics with Batteries and Energy Storage and the projected growth profile from organizations that study this day in and day out.
http://www.galaxyresources.com.au/media/announcements/1802236.pdf
Galaxy Resource chart from the last few years:
Nemaska Lithium chart from the last few years:
Lithium Americas chart from the last few years:
Critical Elements chart from the last few years:
First Cobalt chart from the last few years:
I find it amusing that in 2015 and 2016 when I was posting about these trends and how the Lithium miners were going to take off, that almost every time on each blog, people resisted the trend. Sometimes they opposed it aggressively or they just took a swing at Elon Musk and Tesla (which is just a tiny piece of the story) and missed a great investing opportunity.
Many of the quality companies went on to rally 500% -1500% regardless of what the haters and doubters thought and the trend played out with their full awareness and regardless of their ill-informed opinions.
In 2017 Lithium miners were one of the few profitable places to camp out in the commodity sector, and yet people scoffed, often while holding on to losing stocks in other sectors that were bombing out. That’s what makes a market though 🙂
The same thing happened when a few of us started posting about Cobalt on here in 2016 and 2017 and people mocked the concept, and yet many of the Cobalt miners shot up 200-500% in about a year and there were plenty of profits to be had.
I stopped caring what other people think a long time ago, and have shared ideas regularly on here and other blogs for years to give new investors a starting point. Most of the Lithium and Cobalt companies discussed went on to be huge winners, but instead of investing in them, most just shook their heads and went on to brag about their gas guzzling car of choice. (as if their love affair with a vehicle helped them make any money investing in the resource sector).
It never made any sense why people worked so hard to try and discredit a trend that is clearly playing out as plain as daylight, and why they just wouldn’t want to profit from the speculative interest when it showed up. It was not surprise when any of those parabolic moves played out, and the stubborn resistance to the trend only cost them huge returns.
People can continue doubt this trend all they want, and laptops, smart phones, tablets, power tools, Electric Cars, Electric Buses, eBikes, drones, and back up batteries will continue to be cranked out all over the world without their permission.
Investors that scoffed at Energy Metals or Battery Metals over the last few years completely blew an easy way to make multi-bagger returns in Jr Resource stocks, when many commodities were still trying to get off the mat.
Tragic comedy.
One’s money can’t be everywhere, Ex, and those who went heavily into silver stocks instead of lithium in 2016 easily did as well or better. In fact, SILJ crushed LIT for the first half of that year. Gold and silver are the “pure plays” when it comes to the Fed/government-caused distortions that have driven commodities since 2016.
So I found it amusing that some investors held so little exposure to the pm stocks and so much exposure to various other commodities at the start of 2016 and sold too much of their pm stocks way too soon.
People love stories but it is ultimately Fed policy that turbo charges commodities when the whole complex is doing well. Remember all the “peak oil” fools of the last decade? LOL!
Musk, btw, thoroughly deserves any “swings” one might take at him and lithium cars suck! 😉
Like zinc and the other non-monetary commodities, lithium did better after the PMs had peaked.
LIT gained about 75% following SILJ’s peak but still only tripled in 125 weeks. Compare that to SILJ’s quintupling in just 29 weeks…
http://schrts.co/nyTxo7
One of the bigger differences with Lithium miners versus Silver miners is that most of the remaining Silver miners are the survivors and as a result are well run or legitimately have something tangible in the ground (so the SILJ components were primed to outperform in the 2016 rush); where the constituents in the LIT at that time in 2016 were either large chemical conglomerates like FMC or Albamarle or SQM or batyery companies and there was only a spattering of true Lithium miners in that ETF. So comparing those from only 2016 is a bit apples and oranges. If you look at the moves of real Lithium produ ets or developers back from late 2015 into 2016 & 2017 like Galaxy Resources, Nemaska Lithium, Orocobre, Lithium Americas, Critical Elements, Wealth Minerals, Lithium X, etc… then their gains were just as epic as most Gold or Silver miners.
In addition, I consider the Battery metals like Lithium or Cobalt tied more to the energy narrative than just regular commodities. Now components like Copper or Nickel are more correlated to the commodity sector and base metals (despite pundits trying to attach them to the Energy Metals narrative.
Sorry for the typos as I normally post from computer and struggle typing from my phone.
That should have said “if you look at the moves of real Lithium producers or developers in late 2015/2016 into 2017, then theirs gains were just as epic as most Gold & Silver miners.
As most here know I’m a huge fan of Jr Gold and Silver miners, but in late 2016 and most of 2017 they didn’t do that great. Yes there was the seasonal Q1 run in early 2017 and the late August into September seasonal rally, but I was sure happy to have non-monetary metals like Lithium, Cobalt, and Zinc in 2017. I actually rotated winnings out of those sectirs and into the PM stocks at several points last year. Diversification allows for good value arbitrages year after year.
sectirs = sectors
>> Here’s a chart of Impact Silver priced in Galaxy Resources (both Jr producers and explorers) that sums up the action a bit better:
Generally speaking, the gold/silver miners are once again a better place to focus one’s efforts than lithium stocks.
SILJ:LIT weekly…
http://schrts.co/YvoM18
For the medium term I agree with you, but in the 2nd half of 2016 and in 2017 Lithium miners crushed the PM stocks.
My point was that if resource and energy investors had diversified into Lithium miners (not the terrible LIT ETF) in late 2015 and 2016, then they would have beat most of the general stock indexes and in late 2016 and most of 2017 most of the PM miners.
Not everything is about investing in monetary metals or the central bankers narrative. The explosion in manufacturinh of EVs, Electric Buses, eBikes, laptops, smart phones, tablets, power tools, drones, etc.. has little to do with the Gold/Silver narrative.
The tie in with the miners is that they are extractive industries, where investors must speculate on the value of their resources, the ability of management to execute a cost effective business strategy on mining the assets, and looking for under-valued companies with goo leverage to a rising underlying metal or mineral.
Goo = Good
Re: “but in the 2nd half of 2016 and in 2017 Lithium miners crushed the PM stocks.”
Did you look at the SILJ:LIT chart in the comment that you replied to? It makes it perfectly clear that the pm miners got crushed by the lithium stocks — which is why I said the pm miners are “once again” a better place to be.
Commodities are often out of sync with the monetary metals because they don’t have all of the same drivers.
Yes, I saw the link to your SILJ:LIT chart Matthew and said I agreed with your thesis that now the PM miners will start to outperform in the medium term.
My initial point in this thread was that the Lithium miners were a great place to be starting in late 2015 and through 2016 and even most of 2017, when other sectors like the Jr Gold and Silver miners were doing so hot. The point of this blog’s editorial was about Energy Metals and I was agreeing with Louis James and the premise that it was more than a fad and was a legitimate business trend playing out, and that it was easy for any investors paying attention to capture out-sized gains.
My statemen was that I was glad I was diversified in non-monetary commodities like Lithium, Cobalt, Zinc in later 2016 and 2017 when the PM miners weren’t doing so hot, but mentioned pulling profits last year in the Lithium miners to be able to rotate into the depressed PM stocks. (so clearly I feel there is now more unrecognized value in the Gold & Silver Jrs).
I also mentioned a few times above that there are totally different investment narratives driving the Battery metals than the monetary metals. Those comments made it perfectly clear I understood and already stated that they “don’t all have all the same drivers.”
You’re the one that started responding to my posts about how diversifying across sectors was prudent over the last few years, and proceeded to tell me how great Silver miners did in 2016, which you are well aware that I know and participated in.
Again, most of the individual companies I was posting about and investing in back then also did great 5-15 baggers from early 2016 and through 2017. I’m not talking about LIT and it was weighted in a bunch of companies back then that had little to do with Lithium or the mining aspect so again, so I don’t use it as representative of what was going on in the Jr Lithium stocks.
Yes, over time they’ve added more Li miners and pruned out a bunch of the old battery and chemical and electrical companies, but it’s always been a crappy allocation and isn’t the best vehicle to use to compare to Jr miners.
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>> Here’s a chart of Impact Silver priced in Galaxy Resources (both Jr producers and explorers) that sums up the action a bit better:
That chart tells the same story as SILJ:LIT. Year-to-date, Impact is crushing Galaxy.
Nothing wrong with diversifying. Commodities in general did very well after gold/silver peaked in 2016 (COPX beat LIT) just like I expected —which is why I told you the following before anything, including the pm stocks, had started to move (1/10/16): “I actually like zinc a little further out so accumulating TV and SMT would make sense.”
“Not everything is about investing in monetary metals or the central bankers narrative.”
You’re too much, Ex.
Thanks for sharing your perspectives Matthew.
We are mostly in agreement about the major concepts, but disagree on smaller nuances in investing. That’s fine and I don’t expect to always be in agreement with anyone, nor do I expect people to always agree with me.
I appreciate the conversations even if they get a bit testy, and really do enjoy considering your outlook economically/politically/philosophically. Sometimes it is too much for me, just like I’m too much for you. That’s what makes the world go round 🙂
Wolf Tiger? huh? While I believe Lous is a pretty smart cat why the strange name change?