01-JANUARY 29-2023

Today!

January 29, 2022

Earn Your Position

People often wait to get into a leadership position before they lead, but you don’t always have that luxury.  Sometimes, especially if you part of an organization that is struggling, you have to create your own position.  You can’t always stand on the beach waiting for your ship to come in.  Sometimes you have to swim out there and meet it.

• The greatest opportunities for leadership typically arise in times and places where it’s needed most.  It is often those times when things are troubled or chaotic when you can move light years ahead.  Sometimes a situation that looks like the worst thing that could happen to your career can wind up being exactly the blessing your career needs.
• Find people to work with whose skill sets compliment yours.  As important as it is to build on your own strengths, it is just as important to surround yourself with people who are good at those things you’re not good at.
• Embrace adversity.  It’s where you have the greatest opportunity to flourish.  Strong leaders thrive on challenging times.  It fact, the only way to genuinely survive adversity is to embrace it.
• Real leaders are the hardest workers.  Where you’re in a leadership position, people need to see that no one is more committed and working harder than you.
• Don’t take yourself too seriously.  If you do, nobody else will.  No matter what your position is, you are not a big deal.

ACTION STEP
In your present business or career, is there a vacuum crying out to be filled?  List at least three things you can do to serve the team that go beyond your job description.

January 29, 2021

Good morning.
The fee-heavy, underperforming Wall Street “pros” have one thing to say to retail traders: Stay out of my territory.  Instead of closing out their short positions and looking for the next trade, the industry has come out heavily against the little guy picking up shares of GameStop.
This “Black Thursday” showed that major brokerage firms and hedge funds are more than willing to collude to keep traders from buying companies they like at a price they’re willing to pay, all so their wealthier friends can get a bailout.  That’s on top of the fact that large funds can already see the order flow from these retailer brokerages so they can front-run the trades of retail investors.  Clearly, the fix is in.  Hopefully instead of slinking away, retail traders will build a better investment platform that won’t lock them out of big trades.  Maybe retail investors need to buy Robinhood when it goes public, to prevent this kind of “rules for thee but not for me” mentality from ever having power again.

Now here’s the rest of the news:

China Surpasses U.S. as Largest Recipient of Foreign Direct Investment During COVID Pandemic. –Tucker Higgins
“Foreign direct investment” comes from people and businesses in other countries, like factory construction or opening a new office.  How did China replace the U.S. as #1? [Read Here]

January 29, 2020

What I say is going to make you money!

“The most effective positioning in sales or network marketing recruiting
… is when your prospect has to sell themselves to you.”

People love to be:

• • • Chosen
    • Qualified
    • Winners
    • Selected

What you run away from will chase you!

• • Everything you chase will runaway…
  • Everything you run away from will chase you…

People do not appreciate ‘that which’ is given to them easily and without effort.

Whoever cares the least IS in control.  😉

January 29, 2019

Payday of sorts… Tracking Productivity!

• ”Would you drive without a speedometer?”
• ”Would you use a bank that could not tell you how much money was in your bank account?”
• ”Don’t try to grow a business without tracking productivity.”

Hmmm, honestly it depends:  If I was driving on the Auto-Bahn in Europe, where there was no posted speed limit, I likely wouldn’t think it significant whether my speedometer was working or not.  In the city driving in a residential neighborhood with children playing, schools zones in effect, radar and police … I’d be more observant, you would hope.  Rushing someone to the hospital … again a different matter.

Tracking productivity is important — it’s the markings like the 60 … 30 … and 10 yard line.  Ultimately the driving one’s self across the goal-line or kicking the ball through the goalposts … will determine if the team moved forward successfully!                 

The ‘life partner’ to productivity is ‘accountability’.  Touchdowns, field goals and yards — forward & back — are measured.  Bean counters, officials, umpires and score keepers … each tracking execution, movement and data; but ONLY YOU AND YOUR FAMILY can determine if the effort — the exertion and any sacrifices made along the journey — were really and truly worthwhile.  No lives at risk today!  No ambulance required.  😉

Did The Ends — Justifying The Means?

… AND …

Did The Means — Justifying The Ends?

January 29, 2018

Learn, Invest and Prosper in Oil & Gas

• Keith Schaefer

Industrial end-users of lithium are nervous about securing lithium supply — at any price — and they are buying into and buying out junior lithium companies.  Demand is ramping and new production is coming on very slowly.

Most recently, Toyota —  the first or second largest automaker in the world, depending on the day — bought a 15% stake in junior lithium producer Orocobre (ORL-TSX; ORA-ASE) for US$224 million.  Toyota said right in the press release this was to secure lithium supply.  Toyota is the first — and largest — non-Chinese company to move quickly in the face of rising lithium demand and prices.

Last November, Lithium X (LIX-TSXv) was bought out by a Chinese investment company called NextView New Energy Lion Hong Kong Ltd.  Lithium X was in the public markets for less than two years, only raised $50 million and was purchased for $261 million.

There’s more:

• Belgium-based Umicore, committed 460 million Euros in cathode capacity expansion.
• Germany’s BASF signed an MOU with Norway’s Norilsk for 400 million Euros to expand battery cathode production in Europe
• Great Walls Motors — China’s largest producer of SUVs — invested $28 million in Aussie-listed Pilbara Minerals and signed an off-take agreement

Looking at Lithium X, and the fact that Pilbara is not even in production (but will be later this year) is a clear example of Chinese interests locking in supply through the next decade.

China does most of the world’s lithium processing, so it’s no surprise to see a Chinese company be the first to do this — nobody knows how tight the lithium market will be in a few years better than them.

But this trend also speaks to — end users do not trust the major producers to ramp up production fast enough to meet demand — which is The Big Surprise.  There were many “smart” investors sneering when the lithium boom took off in early 2016 — saying that the major producers could increase production quickly and easily.

But that hasn’t been the case.

Lithium may be abundant, but getting permits  and technical expertise to bring it to market has proven to be exceedingly rare.  Albemarle (ALB-NYSE) has had a very difficult time bringing their new La Negra asset into production.  Orocobre, a junior producer, is just getting through two painful years of delays and under-performance at their Olaroz brine deposit.

Chilean lithium producer SQM (SQM-NYSE) rocked the lithium world recently when they got approval to increase production by 216,000 tons way up in the Atacama Desert.  But that production is YEARS away.  They still have to find the labour, get the permits, build the mines, wait two years for evaporation… this will have no impact for five years at least.

And that’s why investors are rewarding lithium stocks as they get to production.  Orocobre’s stock has doubled in just 4 months to $6.70 as they fixed their problems.  Albemarle was a triple in the last 2 years, hitting over $140/share.

Even the near term producers are seeing big stock runs, like Nemaska Lithium (NMX-TSX), saw their stock double in the last six months of 2017, as they develop a lithium production facility in Quebec, Canada.

Yes, the lithium supply chain — from top to bottom — is nervous about securing supply, both inside and outside China as the tightness in the lithium market continues.  In 2017, over US $1.3 Billion was committed to or invested in lithium development.

A new lithium mine costs roughly US$400 million (higher for brine, lower for hard rock).  Demand forecasts show at least one new mine is needed per year out to 2025 (around 35,000 tpy at a 14% CAGR), so this pace of funding needs to be maintained and could total as much as $3 to $4 billion USD just in mine development.

And all this investment is upstream, to source raw material supply — I’m not even counting the millions that needs to be spent on refining and processing.

Plans for the pilot plant are already underway.  Their next few catalysts — all within weeks to months from now — will move the company forward so quickly, it will quickly move up the value chain.  And the Big Institutional Money (BIM) will flock to it.

I have never seen a team fast track production like this.  This is the single most impressive technical team I’ve come across in the junior lithium space.  And I’m going to introduce them to you in my next story.

Get yourself ready, as I give you the name, symbol and reasons why my lithium stock will be The Next One to hit The Big Home Run for investors.

In the next wave of Lithium Stock Home Runs — as Big Institutional Money bids up the next round of stocks — having permits, and fast-tracking production, will be key.  And this company has it all.

Keith Schaefer