Latest / Financial Survival Network / Rare Earths: Geopolitics Meets Investing - Louis O'Connor #6293

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Rare Earths: Geopolitics Meets Investing - Louis O'Connor #6293 · Financial Survival Network

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  Speaker 1: Strategic metals. It's not a sort of academic or our
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  Speaker 1: scientific term, but strategic metals are well, let's say the
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  Speaker 1: US Geological Survey lists about forty five maybe fifty metals
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  Speaker 1: which are strategic and critical to all nations, not just
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  Speaker 1: North America, but to all nations economic prosperity and increasingly
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  Speaker 1: military capabilities.
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  Speaker 2: You're listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, where you
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  Speaker 3: And welcome. You are listening to and watching the Financial
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  Speaker 3: Survival Network. I'm your host Carrie Let's Interesting Guests today.
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  Speaker 3: You know, when we talk about metals on this show,
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  Speaker 3: we're usually talking about gold, silver, to a lesser degree, platinum.
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  Speaker 3: You even mentioned rhodium once in a while. But the
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  Speaker 3: person you're about to hear from, Lewis O'Connor, the website
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  Speaker 3: Strategic Metal Metals invest dot com seen since twenty twenty Loot.
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  Speaker 3: Welcome to the show. We've seen one hundred and sixteen
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  Speaker 3: percent return not quite as good as gold and silver,
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  Speaker 3: well little better than silver, a little less than gold.
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  Speaker 3: What is a strategic metal? How do you own them?
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  Speaker 3: Especially rare earths? You know, I don't really have storage
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  Speaker 3: facilities here for lithium, and it's highly combustible in its
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  Speaker 3: native form, And I wouldn't know what to do with
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  Speaker 3: rare earths other than to make them into magnets. I
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  Speaker 3: think there's nothing else to two. How do you play
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  Speaker 3: this market?
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  Speaker 1: Okay, So I guess I'll give you the definition first,
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  Speaker 1: because there probably are a few definitions strategic metals. It's
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  Speaker 1: not a sort of academic or or scientific term, but
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  Speaker 1: strategic metals are well, let's say the US Geological Survey
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  Speaker 1: lists about forty five, maybe fifty metals which are strategic
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  Speaker 1: and critical to the to the to all nations, not
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  Speaker 1: just North America, but to all nations economic prosperity, and
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  Speaker 1: increasingly military capabilities. So the metals we'll talk today about
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  Speaker 1: are more of a subdivision of those. So the first
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  Speaker 1: thing people should know about US carry is you rightly
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  Speaker 1: pointed out, you know, the only end buyer or end
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  Speaker 1: user for these raw materials or tesla or Apple or
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  Speaker 1: US Department of Defense, and and you know, ordinary civilians
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  Speaker 1: sort of have no way of storing them safely and
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  Speaker 1: stuff like that. So the first thing people should know
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  Speaker 1: about us is that are more business is we're an
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  Speaker 1: industry supplier of strategic metals, so we're in business in
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  Speaker 1: that on that side since nineteen ninety nine. We're twenty
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  Speaker 1: five years in business, so eighty five percent of our
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  Speaker 1: business activities were based in Europe. I'm in Ireland at
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  Speaker 1: the moment, but where our main office is in Frankfurt
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  Speaker 1: and Germany, and we have a logistics distribution platform there
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  Speaker 1: where we buy metals, mostly from China at the moment,
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  Speaker 1: and we resell them to four thousand different clients in
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  Speaker 1: seventy four different countries, so manufacturers, industry buyers. We're also
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  Speaker 1: a Tier one supplier to quite a few blue ship companies.
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  Speaker 1: So that's our core business. And if that wasn't our
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  Speaker 1: core business, we'd have no business doing what I'm about
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  Speaker 1: to discuss with you today, which is we have a
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  Speaker 1: side business or as you guys in America call a
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  Speaker 1: side hustle, although it's a little bit bigger on that now.
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  Speaker 1: Our side hustle is we invite private investors to participate
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  Speaker 1: in the supply chain. And out of that forty five
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  Speaker 1: or fifty, there's only about eight or ten that are
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  Speaker 1: relevant as physical assets to private investors. And I'll talk
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  Speaker 1: about any of them if you want today, and I'll
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  Speaker 1: tell you what the characteristics are of what determines them
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  Speaker 1: how do they get on the list to being relevant
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  Speaker 1: as a physical asset. But yet, just to cover your point,
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  Speaker 1: you said, look, there's no point in you or I
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  Speaker 1: have a lithium you know, you know, in fact, I
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  Speaker 1: don't even know if the US customs would allow you
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  Speaker 1: imported because they all have you know, civilian and military applications.
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  Speaker 1: But yeah, we are private investors by the raw materials
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  Speaker 1: from US. They physically own them, but we recommend they
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  Speaker 1: store them in our sister company, which is Mechlock, which
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  Speaker 1: is a storage facility that has the largest inventory of
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  Speaker 1: rare earts anywhere outside of China. And when our clients
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  Speaker 1: have stored there, means they also have access to our
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  Speaker 1: more than four thousand clients around the globe when they're
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  Speaker 1: ready to liquidate.
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  Speaker 3: Got it all right? So uh, tell us what these
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  Speaker 3: metals are and why they're worth so much.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so gallium, germanium, indium, rhenium. Those are some of
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  Speaker 1: the technology metals where ertz dysprosium, neodymium, per seodymium, neodymium.
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  Speaker 1: They have very very unique qualities. Neodymium can hold one thousand,
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  Speaker 1: three hundred times its own weight independently, So they're they're
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  Speaker 1: they're there. They're conductors, their semiconductors. They can withstand very
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  Speaker 1: very high temperatures, so they have multiple applications there asology.
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  Speaker 1: You could say they're the upstream raw materials that ultimately
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  Speaker 1: become trillions of dollars in downstream GDP, TESLA need them,
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  Speaker 1: Apple need them, Department of Defense needs them, aviation space technology. Look,
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  Speaker 1: we live and funny enough, actually, somebody recently said that
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  Speaker 1: in Europe, and this was the President of the European Union,
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  Speaker 1: said that where earths are fast becoming as important, maybe
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  Speaker 1: even more important than oil and gas. So as we
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  Speaker 1: pivot from oil to metals, rare earths are the new
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  Speaker 1: frontline in geopolitical decisions. I mean proof of that is
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  Speaker 1: you know President Trump mentioned critical rare earth minerals in Ukraine.
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  Speaker 1: You know, Greenland is a big lump of ice, so
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  Speaker 1: you know, the main interest ere resources as well, so
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  Speaker 1: and that are very very important and they're they're now
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  Speaker 1: being used as leverage in in you know, in in
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  Speaker 1: national security interests.
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  Speaker 3: Right, okay, so I kind of get that, and it's
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  Speaker 3: kind of like that think from avatar unobtainingum right yeah
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  Speaker 3: yeah yeah, So so what kind of vehicle do you
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  Speaker 3: have for investing in these things?
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  Speaker 1: So we invite private investors to own just like same
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  Speaker 1: paradigm as as gold and silver, they can physically own
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  Speaker 1: the raw materials. Our minimum investment is only ten dollars,
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  Speaker 1: So we recommend people start small, you know, build a
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  Speaker 1: position over time, learn about you know, the raw materials
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  Speaker 1: on which ones are defense metals, which are energy transition,
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  Speaker 1: which are aviation. And we'll help people get educated in
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  Speaker 1: that regard. And we recommend like to be if I
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  Speaker 1: can speak completely sort of frank and be sincere, which
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  Speaker 1: you carry m like, we don't have ten different offers.
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  Speaker 1: We don't also offer crypto or agriculture or a tem
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  Speaker 1: or yeah. Yeah. Now the reason I'm saying that is
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  Speaker 1: we only know one business and that's where an industry supplier.
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  Speaker 1: So we you know, we we have a unique if
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  Speaker 1: you will winning as well investment strategy. And what we
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  Speaker 1: like to do is get people educated and tell them
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  Speaker 1: what the strategy is. And once they have that strategy,
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  Speaker 1: if they'd like to come on board, do But if
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  Speaker 1: they're not aligned with the strategy, then don't. We don't
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  Speaker 1: want day traders or we don't want people coming in
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  Speaker 1: thinking you want to make you know, millions of dollars
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  Speaker 1: and six months or eight months. We recommend a whole
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  Speaker 1: of a minimum three years, five years, even longer, and
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  Speaker 1: we recommend diversifying your purchase so you're you're not just
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  Speaker 1: invested in defense, you're invested in all modern technology, aviation,
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  Speaker 1: medical devices, you name it, all.
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  Speaker 3: Right, and yeah, so, but these metals really aren't that rare.
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  Speaker 3: It's just that China has basically monopolized the entire right,
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  Speaker 3: the entire market for them.
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  Speaker 1: Correct, Correct, China has an unrivaled dominance. And you are right,
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  Speaker 1: despite the name, they're not always that rare some of them.
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  Speaker 1: There're seventeen rare arts and there's only four that we
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  Speaker 1: offer to private investors. So those are the one. I'll
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  Speaker 1: tell you what the characteristics are. One is diversification. We
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  Speaker 1: only offer the metals that actually have the most applications
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  Speaker 1: in manufacturing today. Two, which ones are in the most
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  Speaker 1: demand right at the moment. Obviously, artificial intelligence everybody's talking
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  Speaker 1: about AI runs on data, but it relies on rare
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  Speaker 1: earths for the magnets and the sensors, the cooling systems,
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  Speaker 1: also the computer chips. I should say, so these are
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  Speaker 1: we look at which ones you know, have had the
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  Speaker 1: most applications and are in the most demand. We also
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  Speaker 1: look which ones are the rarest, which ones are the
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  Speaker 1: least in production. Halftium is a good example. There's only
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  Speaker 1: seventy to ninety tons of half theium produced a year,
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  Speaker 1: which you could sort of fit on the back of
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  Speaker 1: a small truck. But here's where it gets interesting. These
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  Speaker 1: rare materials, they do not occur naturally in the Earth's crust.
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  Speaker 1: They're always a byproduct of another raw material. So half
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  Speaker 1: theiums are byproductors are conium mining. For every fifty tons
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  Speaker 1: or their conium, you get one ton of affnium. That's
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  Speaker 1: why China sort of has this sort of dominance at
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  Speaker 1: the moment. The last thing is is that particular reason,
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  Speaker 1: which is whereas their heavy sort of localized production, where's
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  Speaker 1: the supply concentration risk, and those are the four characteristics
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  Speaker 1: that determine that.
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  Speaker 3: Okay, so small markets mostly dominated by China, but the
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  Speaker 3: potential exists and it's being worked on now to actually
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  Speaker 3: build additional capacity throughout the world. How long is that
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  Speaker 3: going to take?
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  Speaker 1: Well, the average you know, obviously, I know your audience's US,
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  Speaker 1: so I'll give you some US examples. The average time
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  Speaker 1: from maiden discovery to being to production in America recently
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  Speaker 1: for a minus twenty nine years. So even though you
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  Speaker 1: know there's MP materials and minerals, I should say in
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  Speaker 1: California they produce rare earths, but at the moment they
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  Speaker 1: still have to sell most of their raw materials to
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  Speaker 1: China for pro processing. So it's not the fact, as
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  Speaker 1: you pointed out earlier, that they're there's for example, there's
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  Speaker 1: five hundred thousand abandoned coal mines in the US that
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  Speaker 1: have mind tailings. There's rare earths there, but the engineering expertise,
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  Speaker 1: the human capital doesn't exist in Europe or the US.
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  Speaker 1: The process these materials, they have to be extracted, they'll
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  Speaker 1: be separated, and they have to be re metallized. It's
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  Speaker 1: more of a metallurgical process than a mining process two
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  Speaker 1: purity levels of you know, nineteen nine point ninety nine
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  Speaker 1: nine percent. You know, that could be in the engine
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  Speaker 1: of an F thirty five jet, or it's nuclear sub
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  Speaker 1: or whatever whatever. So so China is about a generation
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  Speaker 1: ahead of Europe and the rest of the world in
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  Speaker 1: terms of the metallurgical process. And and i'd imagine you know,
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  Speaker 1: you're right, there's the will is there, and the political
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  Speaker 1: will is there are now and to weaner dependence off China,
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  Speaker 1: but that's going to take time. It didn't happen overnight,
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  Speaker 1: and it'll take a bit of time to remedy.
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  Speaker 3: Remedy right now. I've read that even though China is
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  Speaker 3: attempting to control these markets, there's a huge smuggling market
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  Speaker 3: where they smuggle the rare earth's out of China. Is
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  Speaker 3: that correct?
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  Speaker 1: Yes, China has certainly teamed up the market a lot.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, they've really consolidated since the nineteen eighties. But yeah,
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  Speaker 1: there there's you know, there at one point there were
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  Speaker 1: roague mines. Even that's that's sort of non existent. But yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I mean they're a valuable commodity and anything can you know,
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  Speaker 1: anything that would would exist in the normal sort of
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  Speaker 1: trade and stuff exists with.
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  Speaker 3: This, Okay, all right, So you got to tell us
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  Speaker 3: where we find you, Lou, how we connect with you
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  Speaker 3: on the web.
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  Speaker 1: Sure, our website is www dot Strategic Metals Invest dot com.
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  Speaker 1: And if somebody wants he made me direct and mention
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  Speaker 1: your name, carry it's Louis l o U, I s
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  Speaker 1: at Strategic Metalsinvest dot com and I'll be sure to answer.
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  Speaker 3: Them, all right, And you'll find a link in the
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: show notes for this interview that will take you to
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: Lose Sight. And while you're there, it's on Financial Survival
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: Network dot com. We just asked that you sign up
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: for a free newsletter. Take a look at the book
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: that we're offering the world. According to Martin Armstrong Conversations
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: with the Master Forecaster, Lou appreciate you coming on and
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: it's going to be interesting to watch see how this
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: whole thing unfolds. And we will talk to you again soon.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Thanks Gerry, thanks for listening to Carrie.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Let's this Financial Survival Network your solution to today's trying times.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: For the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Survival Network now more than ever