bonzo – Gone are the glory days of Wimbledon with Federer I feel being the last class act! As for England/Italy I can’t bear to watch:, given that the hysteria either way will only leave England in a worse place! Sorry but my killjoy instincts are now ramped up to the max!
Best to you and Tony, Andrew

Thanks for the ideas of lithium companies to interview. I’d never heard of Lilac Solutions until you posted that, but their extraction technology and ability to add it on for a company in a modular fashion is very interesting. They are however a private company that people are unable to invest in.

To interview them would be still valuable to better understand DLE and the other plays

Nice article

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4436996-standard-lithium-faster-cheaper-and-greener-lithium-mining-to-spark-the-ev-revolution

Lithium stocks catch fire; Albemarle rallies to new all-time high

Jul. 12, 2021 – By: Carl Surran – Seeking Alpha

Albemarle (ALB +6.8%) rallied to a new all-time intraday high today while also leading the S&P 500 leaderboard, despite no news out on the company or the broader lithium sector.
Following gains on Friday, the top lithium ETF (NYSEARCA:LIT) also hit a new record high, +4.3%, and other lithium names also fared well: LAC +10.8%, LTHM +6%, SQM +5.5%.
Ten days ago, General Motors announced a deal with U.S. miner Controlled Thermal Resources for a “multi-million dollar” investment to boost efforts to extract lithium from California’s Salton Sea.
GM secured first rights on lithium produced by the first stage of the Hell’s Kitchen project, including an option for a multi-year relationship.
A few days later, Standard Lithium (OTCQX:STLHF) shares soared as much as 16% last Thursday on news they would be listed on the NYSE American market.
Macquarie analysts recently upgraded their long-range lithium carbonate and hydroxide forecasts by up to 13% and spodumene by up to 30%, saying the market is heading for a “perpetual deficit” with supply unable to keep up with strong demand.

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3714528-lithium-stocks-catch-fire-albemarle-rallies-to-new-all-time-high?mail_subject=lac-lithium-stocks-catch-fire-albemarle-rallies-to-new-all-time-high&utm_campaign=rta-stock-news&utm_content=link-3&utm_medium=email&utm_source=seeking_alpha

Another interesting dynamic is that Inflation finally reared it’s head again in 2021 (even though we all know there has been inflation happening all along just not in the warped government calculations of CPI and “core” CPI that strips out energy and food costs).

Any way you slice it costs have continued to go up in most aspects of life for a long time, and anybody paying for food, energy, clothes, products, or events can easily remember how much things used to cost versus how much they cost now. The erosion of purchasing power has been constant and is a silent and insidious tax on the citizens of any nation. Now even in the US inflation can no longer be disguised even in the government metrics. The genie is out of the bottle now, and try as they may, that inflation genie is not going back in any time soon.

Sure, we may see inflation readings tame down for the next 2 months a little bit, which will feed fuel to the “inflation is just transitory” narrative, but medium term inflation is unlikely to back down, and much more likely to keep chugging higher.

The FED has no interest in people getting worried about inflation, because if so, who in the hell would want to buy treasuries offering 1.5% or 2% returns, when inflation is 3-5%? The answer: nobody. This is why they spend so much time crafting the narrative to be just “transitory” because if investors quite buying bonds, then interst rates will skyrocket higher, and this makes that mountain of debt unstainable.

For the average citizens that want to save money for the future they must contemplate the following: Who would want to park money in CDs or Money Markets paying 1-2% if the inflation is 3-5% and eroding their money more than the paltry saving return they are getting? The answer: nobody.

There will be a point as the central bankers jawbone things into a boring range, and do their best to tapdance around the reality of inflation running much hotter than they can control, where people will wake up and see the writing on the wall. If they start losing the war, then central bankers will just come out with overt yield curve controls to keep those rates from getting too high which would cripple the debt burdened system, and rising rates would also temper back the general stocks markets.

As a result, when the larger financial institutions, pension funds, and insurance companies finally wake up and realize they are getting hosed holding bonds, due to the erosion of inflation, then there will be a massive capital migration out of bonds which will look for a home in different assets with a better return or that can keep pace with inflation. That is traditionally in Energy and Precious Metals.

However, for the last few years, there has also been the phenomenon of investors dog piling into the general stocks markets into a narrow band of lunatic high-flying tech stocks, FAANG stocks, and lately the Meme Stocks, all of which giving the false sense of security that the “indexes are doing just fine and hitting all time highs….” There is sickness under the surface though, and the market breadth is fugly, so really it comes down to an obscene concentration into just a few dozen names, further backstopped by ETFs piling into those same few dozen names.

If the market does eventually have a capitulation moment, and ALL markets eventually do, then even the “safety” of “no lose” tech stocks and growth stocks to infinity and beyond, that investors are so disproportionately concentrated in, will come crashing down to an end.

If inflation keeps running hot, and people start to abandon traditional savings instruments or the safe haven appeal of bonds, and rates are artificially held down by Central Bankers covertly through jawboning, or overtly through yield curve controls, then real rates will continue to be negative and there will be few places left to hide. As that plays out the Precious Metals and Energy sectors will be part of one’s financial lifeboat to keep sailing the uncharted waters.

Higher Inflation Is Here to Stay for Years, Economists Forecast

Wall Street Journal – By Gwynn Guilford and Anthony DeBarros – July 11, 2021

“Americans should brace themselves for several years of higher inflation than they’ve seen in decades, according to economists who expect the robust post-pandemic economic recovery to fuel brisk price increases for a while.”

“The respondents on average now expect a widely followed measure of inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy components, to be up 3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2021 from a year before. They forecast the annual rise to recede to slightly less than 2.3% a year in 2022 and 2023.”

“That would mean an average annual increase of 2.58% from 2021 through 2023, putting inflation at levels last seen in 1993.”

“We’re in a transitional phase right now,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economics LLC. “We are transitioning to a higher period of inflation and interest rates than we’ve had over the last 20 years.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/higher-inflation-is-here-to-stay-for-years-economists-forecast-11626008400

Ted Siedle: The Pension Time Bomb is Ticking:

The Truth About Your 401(K) That No One Tells You

I Love Prosperity w/ Jake Ducey – Jul 9, 2021

“In this video, we talk to one of the top corporate whistleblowers in the world, Ted Siedle. He breaks down the truth about the pension crisis, and 401(k). We discuss how the pension crisis got to be so bad, how Wall Street has taken advantage of everyone, and how 401(k) is not going to be able to help the terrible retirement crisis.”

https://youtu.be/MaqJ-dO8Vbw

Other good news is that the miners can and probably will do better than most expect as gold climbs that arc. The conditions for great outperformance are in place.

Why The Meme Stock Revolution Will Last

Andy Serwer with Max Zahn – Sat, July 10, 2021

“The economy and markets are awash in money; from stimulus checks, Federal Reserve policy moves and rising wages, all of which are boosting stock prices to record highs.”

“Interest rates are at record lows which is creating, among other things, massive demand for high-yielding junk bonds, sending their yields below the rate of inflation rate for the first time ever. (Low rates are also contributing to the run-up in stocks, as stocks are now the only investment providing any kind of return.)”

Betting against all this froth has proven to be a fool’s errand so far, giving proof yet again to the Wall Street adage: “The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”

“And yet there are at least two factors that are potentially different this time around; cryptocurrency and the meme stock phenomenon. I won’t dwell on crypto — and all of its potential and foibles — here, but will focus instead on meme stocks and more broadly, the so-called retail investor revolution.”

“Before I delve into that though, let me acknowledge that in suggesting something that is unique or new when it comes to the financial markets, triggers another Wall Street aphorism. To wit: “Beware when someone says ‘this time it’s different.’” Meaning, a new business model or trading scheme isn’t really new at its core and the old rules still apply, especially the one that says bubbles always burst.”

“First, let’s define terms. When I’m talking about meme stocks,* I’m of course speaking of GameStop (GME), AMC (AMC), Blackberry (BB) and a few dozen other usually heretofore off-beat stocks that get talked up online, most prominently at Reddit’s wallstreetbets forum by an army of 10.6 million “degenerates.” These investors share tips, ideas and conspiracy theories and buy and sell stocks and options, sometimes trading these securities “to the moon” (to use the lexicon). Unless you’ve been in hiding for the past year, you probably know how crazy this all is, with GameStop, $GME, the meme stock poster child, going from $3 to $300 and now back to $190, over the past year…”

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-the-meme-stock-revolution-will-last-093624458.html

I posted earlier few hours ago this.

Gold is retesting what was resistance between $1796-$1802. If it can hold it will become support and you we go. A daily cycle close above $1814 and Houston we have take off!

Turns out it went even slightly lower seems to have run the stops and now we have a beautiful reversal which if we can get into the green would be picture perfect!