gold news

 [Music] I'm Charlotte McLoud with investin news.com and here today with me is Janny kosovich he is an investor an author he started a number of Junior mining companies thank you so much for being here great to have you once again yeah been a long time since we chatted so it's going to be nice to at the end of the year December tax loss season and uh talk about some themes hopefully that uh people haven't seen and uh by other interviews recently so yes I'm really glad to be talking to

you it has been a little while since we did one of these interviews so we've got a lot to catch up on and I was telling you before we turn the camera on whenever I think of you I think about copper so I wanted to begin there although of course we're going to get into a number of other different topics so copper the price has seen ups and downs this year I wanted to start with a broader question what are the Dynamics that are moving the price what are the key things you're watching well I submit to everyone that

I talked to about copper is the people that really move it like when you see these big spikes up we saw it recently an all-time high and then it collapses down speculators are the ones that make the big moves it's not so much the end user even though they may scramble at certain times but nobody in the world wants to pay high prices for any commodity particularly copper and of course everyone knows that China is the biggest buyer of all Commodities and they're like 50% of the copper market so

we will continue to see that what we look for is a me as a Speculator is higher plateaus you know copper sits there if you look at it over a two or three year period what's the the the number you know like back in 2015 the copper price seemed to always have a two in front of it it was stuck there now copper has a four in front of it and I believe eventually we will see an all-time inflation adjusted High copper price the markets always want to see that but it won't stay there speculators will push

it there the real end user everyone just backs away namely the Chinese and the Speculator does the work for them and you're going to see candles where it goes down just like it did recently when it that reached that all-time high it gaps down five six% a day for four or five days and it'll correct you know 25% but in a week you know and so that's what we look for but long term it's going to move from the bottom left to the upper right of your screen and it's going to be uh something that uh is

gonna it's the big enabler of electrification yeah I think I think there's definitely that thought that copper has such a good long-term story and maybe we shouldn't worry too much about what's going on in the near term or the medium term although we do we do hear copper referred to as Dr copper because it's a bell weather for the health of economy so I wanted to get your thoughts on that what is copper telling us about the health of the global economy right now I think we've

got some interesting things going on in the us as we prepare to see Trump start his second term and of course China as you mentioned such a big copper consumer interesting things going on there as well well because the Speculator has a has a role to play there so if you have overwhelmingly bad news if you're you know as Trump comes in on January 20th if there's going to be with respect to tariffs if if they're if they're punitive you know more countries than everyone even thought maybe it's a it's

a negotiating tactic but that has you know anyone that trades copper namely a Speculator negative you want to be negative on copper copper prices are going to go down if you see something very you know very negative happen there but it's not going to be longterm you know because is anyone that has already lived the tariffs once if you are looking to tariff something coming from China you know if it's a lawn chair well lawn chairs are going to become 25% more expensive and the idea is that people

build lawn chairs in the United States so so that they're not sourcing them from China but China is a cheaper manufacturer whether it's built by someone in in Ohio or imported from China the lawn chair is going to be more expensive you know and eventually people feel that and that is inflation that's inflationary so it's not a good long-term play it's a good negotiating tactic but um it's going to have if it's really really impactful we're going to see the copper prices probably going

down if it's not so impactful you know and that all plays in with um what's going on in the copper world we have not seen big disruptions as we have uh maybe 15 years ago where there there were big things happening at Big mines where they shut down immediately things have been pretty good for for the last years you know so if you if you get a disruption on a large copper mine that's a problem and that that's something that buttresses the copper price and if people could picture in the theater of

their mind I saw on Twitter Robert Friedland put in a very interesting graphic so just imagine this you have the copper price over 25 years going from a dollar to four and a half five and then there's a a bar bar graph where how many big discoveries have been found every year when you get the last four or five years it's zero nothing people either they're not having success or they're trying or there hasn't been as much expiration so it it's eventually that's makes things

desperate in the longer run and there's a reason where BHP all the major miners want to have greater exposure to Copper we know that but they can't find it that's why BHP is looking uh for the Anglo deal where Rio Tinto at their investor day last week lithium where's the growth for riotinto going to come from it's going to come from lithium they really talked it up they people can go there download that presentation and they explained line by line don't listen to the the noise out

there you want to listen to the music listen to the to the notes as Don Cox used to say and it's what it's telling us even in in a in a worst case scenario the kager growth rate of lithium is going to be something in the double digits they see it riento growing in the next 25 years by 600% I mean when you look at the those um charts with bubble chart with every Commodities listed and the bigger the bubble the more important the more valuable the commodity is oil the biggest copper gold going down lithium

used to be a little period in Rio's presentation they see lithium grows it becomes one of the important Commodities so it's going to be growing by this kind of level wood McKenzie thinks that Rio tento is too conservative they see it growing by 800% so even though there's such negative sentiment with lithium we can get into that more more here but but a copper integrated Mining Company like Rio tento is pivoting big time it's going to become 15% of their overall business growing from almost nothing and

all the metals that they're focused on electrification the enabling of electrification copper aluminum and lithium this is the takeaway here I think it's really interesting to look at it from that riotinto perspective and I definitely have a bunch of questions for you on lithium before we go over there one more on copper so given all the Dynamics that you've been discussing is now the right time to get into copper and what are the best ways that you see to play that given that we've got the

majors looking for new discoveries it's been hard to make one how would you approach it well depending on your risk tolerance you know and there's three sort of buckets that people can play copper the most important bucket for a Speculator is going to be the drill hole play when you have smart people uh with good science well-funded and they're looking uh to find the next big deposit and and those always pay out you know you look at any example but going back almost perspective of the jurisdiction

where people have drilled but when you drill a bonanza type Discovery hole that stock goes ballistic so that is a Speculator that's that's the most important bucket I think people want to focus on myself I'm I'm speculating right now with coer niico Ian beik company bought a nice position there they're Drilling in Peru good targets a lot of smart people good science funded the second one is the takeout Target so a company that's well established that has a a big resource

are they is does a bigger company want to buy that company do they want that resource that's a way to play copper and you look at something like Entre gold that's got that closy to oot tooy which has now been Consolidated by Rio Tinto well the mine plan is all of a sudden coming into the entree territory you know so the Takeo Target I would say that's something that you you a Speculator could see well that where you have the the immediate premium is paid on a take out and the Third Way is a

school bus something a little bit more more conservative it's established not doing too much you really want to take care of the value per share you're not looking for a rocket ship when we did copper bank which is now fairday that's what it was they spent a lot of money acquired the projects we did nothing we waited for qualified people that going to want something like that and we and we did a a friendly sort of a merger with them and then they're managing the company very well I will suggest a

company like Horizon copper which is the largest shareholder of entree they own 24% they have a a 1.66% not uh net profit interest in the antamina mine and they also own a 30% um non-operating interest in the hot Madden project in Turkey school bus so it's if you want something more conservative that's still got torque another way you could call that is optionality like with the copper price so those are the three ways I think people can look at plant copper Majors that's for investors not

for speculators okay perfect and I really appreciate the examples there I think it really illustrates exactly what you're talking about so thank you for going into that and now let's let's head over to lithium I'm really interested to hear more of your thoughts on that so you mentioned riotinto looking at lithium this is something that investors should be starting to look at as well but maybe we can talk about how we got into the situation with lithium where we're at right now because of course

prices have become very depressed after going up how did we get here what are your thoughts I'm just fascinated with Junior mind in and and Mining in general because if as we all know Rick rule used to tell the story where if your favorite pair of shoes go on sale you buy three pairs when shares collapse there's no buyers we are now Beyond despondency and despair we are I will submit to you capitulation you know only if we maybe see a little bit more volume when the shares are collapsing 90% that tells you

capitulation is sort of already manifested itself you want more evidence here's a good statistic for you vanck launched their critical Metals uh ETF in 2021 did you know it's the worst performing ETF in the world okay the money's been blown out of the thing they been blowing all all whatever they held in that thing has just been you know been decimated and so you then say well it's over you don't want to be in lithium you don't want to be in battery Metals not true when the f change so do I what do

you do Sir John vard KES Cobalt we remember a few years ago the shortages in Cobalt and then the worry that people had with these Cobalt the lithium ion batteries that had Cobalt and nickel and or nickel manganese or whatever chemistry you wanted is that they they couldn't get the Cobalt how do we work the Cobalt out and they started working these lithium uh iron phosphate batteries the lfp battery and they work they're a bit heavier they're a bit Dumber but they work in many applications and now it's very important

like the Chinese market has taken off with these type of batteries and you're going to see both of them continue to be built so when you look at going forward the lithium the demand and the reason that riento doesn't believe they're executing the future of their business is lithium and their smart people Exon Mobile their homepage uh about a year ago was lithium they announced to the world that they're going to be producing lithium at a commercial scale from Arkansas using dle direct lithium extraction you know so

let us think more of something that's buried you know not the page one story not the headline like Don Cox says look for the story on page 16 but it's headed to page one I will submit to people that we are going to see in the future oil and gas companies oil and gas investors involved more and more so in the lithium game but with direct lithium extraction it's the exact same Workforce it's the exact same knowledge base these people are going into um abandoned abandoned oil well infrastructure the footprint is

much smaller you get the lithium almost instantaneously you're not waiting for a year and a half or two years with evaporation like you do um with um these evaporation ponds in South America and I'm speculating that following these big companies I lose no sleep at night that the demand of lithium is going to grow by 15% kagar growth rate now if it's only 12 it's only 10 it's mega growth it's an industry you want to be in and the only way that that's going to the takeup is going to be there is from new

technology and that's exactly what dle is so I'm speculating with lithium bank and if you put that in concert with the kurent situation how I just told you that the vanc ETF has been decimated we are in despondency lithium Bank shares have plummeted just like everyone else over the past sort of 15 months but this is very important to understand the tax LW selling has been so pronounced and is so valuable for people that bought lithium Bank shares in the previous financings all the money

that was raised at lithium Bank happened at much higher levels $190 for 9.5 million bucks $150 for $8.5 million uh three and half million at a dollar and 45 million 80 so when these people that bought those shares they're not selling because of despondency I don't think they're selling because of the tax loss it's worth more than the share even if the share was to double the tax loss for these particular people is worth more money so that's why you see anyone that's selling today I believe is a tax

loss seller meanwhile the company is 80 or 90% less risky the team was beyond expectation they succeeded in creating uh one of the two of the largest lithium resources in the world based on these brins that are going to be with this technology that big oil and gas is in is searching for so with 49 million shares outstanding trading at 30 cents it's fallen in sympathy with everything else and it's 80 or 90% less risky I would think that is a a really interesting speculation for anyone that

wants to follow lithium just follow that but when the price of lithium turns and it will not a question of if but when you know money presumably goes back into these things like these ETFs and investors start reverse going into these uh highest quality lithium Juniors and I think that that's that's a play for the next 18 to 36 months but right now is sort of like we are getting very close to the bottom because capitulation phase is either already occurred or is happening right now in real time is what

people are seeing yeah that's exactly what I was going to ask ask you is about the timing right because from everything that you're saying it sounds definitely we're at or near the bottom here but people I think they always want to time it perfectly right and so they might see it at the bottom and think well you know maybe we'll stay here for a while to take some time for it to move so this is the correct time to get in in your opinion yes absolutely I recall a time when we I was maybe more frequently with

you guys doing interviews when copper prices were $2 and I had launched copper Bank and I would give a lecture I did my book uh in 2016 and I I keynoted every major conference around the world including cesco's famed copper dinner in in April of 2017 I was the gave the keynote and people could still see that if you just Google it cesco Johnny katovich it all occurred all the things that were sort of um sort of forecasting and all I can't say I can't guarantee I have no Crystal Ball but just the

evidence is pointing that way but imagine this I would have a captivated audience of a thousand Junior mining in speculators I would give what I thought was a pretty good keynote I had the undivided attention of everyone in the room and then I would mention just for 30 seconds copper Bank School Bus optionality play you know we never issued warrants you know it's a good speculation even for something in a Tisa where you just take your you know a little portion of your tipsa and buy this not one share would be bought the

day after two days four days after no interest despondency and what happened it was to say it again and this is to use what Rick rule always says not if but when when the copper price would move you make a fortune copper Bank shares went up a th000 per. didn't do a thing the only thing that happened the only variable that changed of course sentiment confidence and the copper price had a small move and the shares went parabolic they went up a, % and and I believe the setup is there the same with certain lithium companies now I'm

suggesting lithium bank because the evidence is pointing to the share structure the very incentivized management team everyone's in it for the shares not the salary um small shares only 49 million shares outstanding 100% control of four projects uh 10 months ago they sold the project they weren't even using for $15 million to a large oil and gas company not never mind the flagship one and Flagship 2 and the rest of the portfolio the market cap of the company today is 13 million and they

have cash you know so this is how ridiculous things are which is why I can sort of like um do the due diligence look at the chart understand what everyone paid for their shares and I think that's a great way to speculate and to follow because then you're going to you're going to be following lithium a little lithium a little careful more careful as well in particularly how the big companies are moving closer closer and moving the chains forward with direct lithium extraction the more they succeed the

more all the companies that have these daay projects are going to succeed I think yeah I definitely see what you're saying there and just if we can maybe talk a little bit more about Supply demand Dynamics in the lithium Market we already talked about Trump coming into presidency in the US in relation to Copper but I think it's really interesting when you start to look at lithium as well because in the past he seems like he hasn't been a huge fan of electric vehicles which of course are

consuming lithium but also now has Elon Musk very close to him so how do you see that playing out very interesting that you pointed out that exactly that thing the whispering in Donald Trump's ear and why because um Donald Trump is a smart guy and Elon Musk is right so let's look at the Eevee Market you he all these bad news the Ford Lightning was a flop no one's buying eeve in America nothing's going to happen meanwhile we live in a we live in a world where other people buy cars we live in a world where

China's the largest Automotive Market in the world okay so I'm talking light automobiles light Vehicles 80 million units 28 million are are sold in China the last four months including October 2.28 million light Vehicles were sold in China which if you extrapolate that over a year is that 272 8 Million number I gave you they're selling more EVS the last four months than they are the internal combustion engine so the data we have from 2023 14 million EVS were sold in the world on on that base

of of um 80 million sales nine million were in China three and a half million in Europe only 1.6 million in the United States so it's true it's been epic fail in the United States but it can only get better they're only going to sell more cars but the the keger growth rate for these EVS is growing 15% 20% it will continue to grow this year we should be about 17 million EVS going off 14 do the simple math what's the keger growth rate so once you try this and it's not going to be because someone's telling you you

must buy an EV it's a better experience more and more people are adopting this but it has to be a a good experience the charging the owning of the vehicle because the infrastructure been so epic fail in parts of Europe and in in parts of the United States non- Tesla so if you buy a Tesla you're a very happy customer it works everywhere you can go anywhere to anywhere it works I did it I drove across America when I did my bip tour but if you bought any other company's electric vehicle you're

frustrated because everyone all different companies their their goofy application you got to download and you got to wait in line they only build one or two Chargers epic fail this is all going to change this is a huge investment area if already has happened in China it's happening in Europe and it's going to go into parabolic mode in the United States they will continue to be the leader and so then it comes to the the chemicals they are going to continuously have to Source more and more of that they're going to do it from

friendly sources and they do have the the biggest battery factories in the world are being built in the United States they're not they're not consuming one pound of lithium yet this will come this is coming in 2026 27 2028 and for the rest of your life Charlotte so that's why Rio Tito believes the Market's going to grow by 6% wood McKenzie by 800% and who cares it's growing and it has to come from all sources so if you're going to grow by to six million tons which is where this

Market's growing um where's it going to come from all sources and not all the batteries are going to be the same it's going to be nmc it's going to be these lithium iron iron phosphate and it's also going to be sodium batteries which they're more going to be used for battery Management Systems where you have a huge solar and wind field and the backup batter is not going to be these expensive sophisticated lithium ion batteries it's going to be these heavy dumb sodium batteries and I'm talking

about a battery the size of a basketball gym that too is coming in the future and and if you um take it one step further the solid state battery look at the chemistry of those too lithium all the chemical composition if you look at them Li Li Li is prevalent throughout so uh don't lose any sleep on that just it they a bit of an over Supply right now the demand will be there the demand is there we are going to have a supply shortage not in the distant future in the next 18 to 36 months it'll be a

front page story and that'll be dovetailed with guess what lithium and oil and gas and with that comes the oil and gas investor and they're the ones that're going to really um take this the the speculation in lithium is going to go to the next level once again it'll be lithium Mania 3.0 coming to um to a screen near you okay that will that will certainly be exciting to look out for we'll certainly have you back to talk about that as we get toward that before I let you go you mentioning all of these

different battery chemistries and definitely over the years we've seen these developments it's changing what other battery metal are you keeping a close eye on right now given that there are quite a few Metals now involved in the making of these different types of batteries well Cobalt is the one that they've substituted out of but we do need Cobalt Cobalt is going to continue to be used be because of its properties in those the most sophisticated batteries the going to the lfp which is

um if you look at the average battery in a car it in the nmc so um nickel mag batteries the there about 10% of the weight would be lithium in the lfp 7 or 8% of the weight is lithium okay um some people will tell you that they are in fact already building sodium batteries for cars but these are little the stupid looking cars these that they're very heavy they're they're not as efficient but it's a battery of the future because we cannot have these sophisticated lithium ion batteries in all the cars if

we start building 40 and 50 million cars a year including the the the countless millions of batteries that are going to be used in backup battery systems the lithium doesn't exist the technology doesn't exist it's going to have to be done by all sources so it'll be the the nmc it'll be the lfp and the sodium batteries you know but when you look at that it's really those various chemistries I don't I don't think there's any other um particular metal that people have to look at you know the

the common denominator across the board is going to be lith and still copper and then when when the copper is not available we're going to be substituting for aluminum because that's the only way that that is going to be possible you know but the common Doomer will continue to be lithium and we will see this it's going to have it probably now we is going back to that riotinto slide where where lithium becomes a very large commodity when it starts to be traded more on a not by appointment and not on this opaque

Chinese you know the Chinese sort of control the price and and we've seen companies like catl and and byd where they just tell people we're we're going to lower the price of the chemicals and the batteries that's not sustainable I don't know why they're doing it now in the short term but that that is what's happening but when the bigger the lithium Market becomes and the more of these Western companies that are that are involved both in the mining and and the and the refinement of it it's going

to become more of a traded market and with that will come Better Price Discovery and with that will come less manipulation and you'll have sort of a true market but it's fair to say that you know it it won't stay at these prices because if people cannot have new production you're not going to have new lithium so not if but when because most of the economic models done by Western companies for all lithium projects top you they were using prices of 20 to 25,000 price of lithium today is 10,000

so and when it was 880,000 a ton never deserved to be there never never deserved to be there whatsoever so let's look at an average price of 25,000 over the long run and I think that's where um things get interesting is what I believe will come in in the next 18 to 36 months uh the lithum lithium Mania 3.0 let's see if I'm right we we certainly will see if you're right thank you for going over that before I let you go any any final thoughts I think one thing I would be curious to hear about so lithium is

this 18 to 36 month play if we look at 2025 what do you think will be the best opportunity next year it's all going to be tethered around January 20th so um president-elect Trump will come in and we'll see what how what do the tariffs look like who are they punishing and how big are they and what impact is there on the American Consumer because they are the one that that's eventually going to pay for this and at the same time in his other ear people are Whispering crypto I talked about Elon Musk and he's going to

really have him understand that the this disintermediation of the global Energy System by having an electric car a solar panel and a backup battery you know that's the future of mankind and we'll America will be the leader there but the other year you have people talking about the role of crypto in American Banking and and so I've saw Michael Sailors talk about having it to go away from the gold stat I mean this this it sounds crazy and allish but if you listen to it it's like okay it's let's see how that plays

out because certainly the people now and will the the Trump's second presidency have everyone stick around for the whole four years because we know what happened the first time people were getting hired and fired left and right so if these same people are there for the for the entire four years um we'll see how that plays out that's going to be interesting you know there's going to be an impact on you know the with certain parts of things that we know well and how will that impact gold I don't know you know

how will that impact uh you know the global economy it's um if if it's punitive and and they're getting in a game of chicken it's uh we'll see we could have a hiccup okay we'll wait and see I think we'll wrap it up there that seems like a good place to end it but thank you so much for coming on to talk we won't wait so long to have you back back next time it was really good to have you thank you and all the best and a great holiday season for you Merry Christmas you as well and once again I'm

Charlotte moud with investing news.com and this is channy kosic thank you for watching if you like this video make sure you hit the like button and subscribe to our Channel we'd also love to hear your thoughts so leave us a comment below [Music]