Yeah, the miners are going parabolic with the value of their goods. I traded a bunch of gold for silver when the gold silver ratio was 88-1 which proved a good move because now it's below 80-1. When it gets to 50-1 I'll trade some back for gold. You'll make big profits with the miners or with metals. Silver reached an all time high this morning and it's just getting started

Yeah. I lied. I didn't sell at $4000/oz.

The Fed's goal of 2% inflation is like my goal of being a billionaire. More rate cuts baked in. Gold to the moon. AEM 2 bagger. EPGIX doing well.

Bloom Energy up big this morning on news of a deal to supply FC's for data center projects.

"Brookfield Asset Management (BAM) said on Monday it will invest up to $5 billion in Bloom Energy's fuel cell technology to power artificial intelligence (AI) data centers."

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/brookfield-bloom-energy-launch-5-114139954.html

I've been doing some more looking at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Other than the news about increasing production, there doesn't seem to be a lot of buzz around them. I decided to put some money into it because I like the fact they produce two power systems that are in demand. I sprinkled a little into nuclear and REE's as well. I think I mentioned the ETFs ZAP and VOLT earlier. I researched their holdings and was looking at the iShares US Infrastructure ETF and found it had several overlapping holdings with the two "data center focused" funds so I went that direction as well.

Cummins and Caterpillar both seem to appear in funds that focus on data center infrastructure. I wasn't aware that Cummins makes SOFC. When looking at one of the ETF's I noticed Cummins in the list of 25 holdings. Did a little looking and, sure enough!, they produce SOFC's and are expecting growth due to data centers.

Rumored that the DoD is stockpiling ree and that sent local mining companies 3x in a week

DoD is in fact starting to stockpile “critical materials”, including REE. Critical materials names are moving.

This is a problem for me, because most of the movers are tiny speculative companies. Pre-revenue, sometimes just mineral rights, a plan to mine, an assay, and connections with connected ppl in the govt who have their hands out. Not my kind of name.

I pretty much stick to names that have revenues, profits, are “real companies”. I’m also skeptical of lithium names because i) I don’t see China embargoing lithium batteries, and ii) I think CATL’s and others’ advances in sodium-ion batteries means that lithium may be partly/largely superseded. Which would slash the demand for cobalt too. I don’t know enough about many of the other critical materials on the US and EU lists.

By the way, the critical materials thing is a challenge for the Europeans too. They are re-arming and China won’t approve any defense-connected exports of rare earth materials, and apparently have only approved half of the civilian exports after imposing a very intrusive process. The EU is gearing up for a trade fight with China; basically China replaced all its lost exports to the US and then some with higher exports to Europe and the rest of the world, so German automakers have laid off 58,000, etc. The EU is trying to build a domestic rare earths supply chain. They no longer trust the US either, as a supplier. So I’m looking at European names. But they have to be “real companies”.

So I’m struggling to find names that meet my criteria. They may be stupid criteria; maybe I just don’t like to make money.

Right now I have Lynas and MP. Am looking at Solvay AS. Probably not going to chase rare earths much more than that.

Note how incredibly stupid US companies have been. I’ve mentioned this before, but US imports of rare earth materials were only about $190 million/yr. It’s like nothing. The big defense companies, big automakers, etc could have stockpiled many years worth of REE, when it was plentiful and cheap. They preferred to buy back stock. Idiots. Japanese companies did stockpile, after the 2010 Chinese embargo of REE aimed at Japan; so they are doing a lot better than the US is. I’m not sure if European companies stockpiled.

Which is, by the way, a reason to not think of rare earths names as long term holds in my personal view. REE is found all over the world, some of the richest deposits are in the US, Australia, LatAm, even Europe has large deposits. Twenty years ago, the US and Europe were the world leaders in rare earth production and refining. They let China corner the global market for rare earth refining because China was willing to pollute its environment to do so and sell the refined material and product very cheaply. So, times have changed. The US and Europe are going to rebuild their domestic rare earth industry. They can clearly do it; this is not “rocket science”. The former world’s largest refining facility for REE still exists, is in France, and has been brought out of mothballs and restarted (by Solvay). Prices of REE will have to triple or quadruple to support that industry; so what, the dollar content of REE in a fighter, EV, computer, etc is trivial. Less polluting methods of refining rare earths will be developed (have been). Products will be designed to use less REE if needed. Suppose rare earth product becomes a $6 billion industry in the US and same in Europe. That is a pretty modest size industry. I’m not sure how many decent sized companies it actually has room for. MP Materials alone can supply a very good sized part of the entire US demand, and Lynas is larger than MP. Solvay alone, if its La Rochelle facility is brought to full capacity, can supply a very good chunk of total EU demand. The US has a head start on Europe, dating back to the previous administration’s grants and support to MP. Europe is catching up and they have as much money to spend as the US. The rare earths scramble might last, my guess, a few years. I don’t know how long the stock scramble lasts - hopefully long enough to be long term capital gains.

I think we'll see money put into those smaller companies if their mines prove out. Halleck Creek was supposed to be this massive find but later reports indicate it's not a large a find as it was said to be. I saw something the other day about American Rare Earths sending out samples.

Something I read about several months ago was coal ash being a source of REE's. I did a little looking and it has been reported on for a while. I wonder why that's not being explored more?

Jyl, the rare earth element is a misnomer. See the graph below. As for the elements itself, the issue is purification to the point of usability within high end electronics. These factories are ccp owned and operated throughout the east. In fact, there’s no other refineries that are US owned/operated. This is rear naked choke hold they have on the west.

Refining is the bottleneck. China imports much of its REE oxide (including from the US) and refines it, makes magnets etc. MP and Lynas have refining in the US and Canada. Still smaller scale. Solvay has recently started refining in France.

Ha ha ABAT just got its DoE grant revoked. Stock from $11.50 to $7.22 in a day and a night. -40%. About right for a crapco.

I am reminded why I stick to real companies.

Don’t know where the REE from coal ash thing is going. Here is a whole bunch of info and links if anyone wants to read up. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/refining-coal-ash-rare-earth-element-recovery-path-james-murphree-jlx5c?

A friend (environmental scientist, long career in water and wastewater) was hired a few years ago to advise on lithium recovery from brine. There were projects, backed by big money, to extract lithium that way. He’s still working on it but, while he can’t tell me much, it still doesn’t sound like anything is imminent. Something about methods that work in the lab failing to scale up.

I’d guess that US and EU want domestic REE supply chain sooner rather than later. Science projects are great but at the end of the day, we know there is no shortage of REE deposits and we also know the amount of REE used is so small that the “traditional” way of refining REE is workable even if doing it in the US/EU costs 5X as much as doing it in China. So extracting REE from fly ash is interesting but I’m not sure why it is a game changer. Certainly not any reason for US/EU to delay investing in today’s methods.

More reading if interested https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2024/mcs2024-rare-earths.pdf

My understanding is that US does not have any refining abilities outside of small laboratory scale. I’ve seen these labs first hand and production is sloooooooow.

I’ve read a lot of studies on the lithium brine extraction from salars... it seems like the green method up lithium production… I don’t think that economy will be funded with the current climate

4years ago, I bought 36 ounces of .999 silver @ $25.00 per ounce. .
It has doubled since that time.
Not that big of a deal but, for once.... I made money on an investment.

I've been good with Fisher. They have beat the S&P by about a point and 1/2, even with taking their fee out.

Yes I read the negative -

I'm a longtime gold holder but it seems day traders have moved in and made it an Animal House food fight. Up another $100/oz today. Getting nervous.

I trimmed GLD in portfolios where it had gotten to 8%.

Also

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1760638534.png

The critical minerals buffs are crying today. I’m not loving MP and LYSDY action but if you stick to real companies, down moves can be like -5-7% not -20-40%.

Well, that’s just gold. Silver should go to at least 80 if not parabolic

Silver will go a lot higher than 80. Most people think that metals are going up. Not so, it's the USD losing value. Depressing really. The value of the dollar has depreciated 88% since year 2000 and will continue to slide.

I took a flier on USA Rare Earths after doing a bit of reading about the mine and their plans for future growth. I figure this is one of the riskiest moves I've made but the money wasn't huge and REE's are going to be needed going forward.