Richard lives with his family on a 160 acre ranch in northern British Columbia. He invests in the resource and biotechnology/pharmaceutical sectors and is the owner of Aheadoftheherd.com. His articles have been published on over 400 websites.
Those who have worked in the business as long as I have will easily remember the rare earth mania of 2008-11. For about three years following China's export restrictions on rare earth elements, which hiked the prices of REEs to record highs, the junior resource market was awash with new rare earth explorers.
Last week I watched news coverage of Green Party leader Elizabeth May and NDP MP Kennedy Stewart getting arrested at Burnaby Mountain, the site of a protest against Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project.
On March 1 Donald Trump announced that his Administration would implement a 25% tariff on all steel imports and a 10% duty on aluminum. President Trump initially said the tariffs would apply to all steel and aluminum exporters but a week later, facing pressure from Republican free-traders, temporarily excluded Mexico and Canada while NAFTA talks continue.
As interest in battery metals continues (it was a major theme at this week's Vancouver Resource Investment Conference), investors are on the hunt for lithium plays that will "hit it out of the park" Ie. find a high-grade discovery hole or identify a significant resource of lithium carbonate, to support the trend towards increased electrification of vehicles that require more and more lithium and other battery metals like cobalt and graphite.
Crude oil prices dropped from $110 a barrel in the summer of 2014 to about $30 in January 2016. The effect on oil producers and oil-producing countries was dramatic. The Russian ruble plunged, and the Canadian dollar slipped to below 70 cents US for the first time since 2003, kicking the country into recession and snuffing out the oil boom in Alberta. Many foreign companies operating in the high-cost Canadian oil sands pulled up stakes.
Gold is climbing as bond yields rise and the dollar falls, over speculation that China is pulling back on buying US Treasuries and Japan signals it is winding down its quantitative easing program.
In the 1800s the United States under President James Monroe invoked the Monroe Doctrine, which stated that any effort by European nations to control any independent state in North or South America would be viewed as "an unfriendly disposition towards the United States."
The intent of the Monroe Doctrine was to free the newly independent colonies of Latin America from mostly Spain and Portugal, so that the States could exert its influence undisturbed.
A $22.6 billion market!
When pot advocates like Marc Emery - the Canadian who ended up in a U.S. jail for selling strains of marijuana seeds over the Internet - referred to the illegality of smoking pot as "prohibition", a lot of Canadians rolled their eyes. The idea that smoking recreational pot is akin to illegal alcohol consumption in the 1920's and very early 1930s in the U.S. seemed a little rich.
One of the world's least known metals is also of great importance, and likely to become more so as renewable energies catch up with and possibly eclipse fossil fuels.
