my blog is awful. How awful? I forgot my password for 10 minutes (yeah it's so bad that I subconsciously never wanted to see it again). Fortunately, I won't let this blog fall apart, I plan on writing at least one post everyday about an interesting investment theme/stock pick that I have come across. I haven't been doing so the past 2 weeks and as a result I've got too many ideas stuck in my head.
One idea I am getting very interested in are lithium ion batteries for cars. Why? In a nutshell, since the arrival of Henry Ford's Model-T one-hundred years ago, the internal combustion engine has basically stayed the same, but now thanks to rapacious U.S. oil consumption (20,000,000 bpd plus baby!), lack of infrastructure investments by MNOC's and NOC's (multinational and nationalized oil companies -thanks EXM and OPEC for having no excess capacity), astonishing BRIC demand (granted Brazil and Russia are basically net exporters), and incredibly large amounts of liquidity that just flood the trading pits (ie speculation from i-banks, and I'll bet sovereign wealth funds) we now can no longer afford to keep the traditional engine. We must look for alternatives and plug-in hybrids are likely the next step (that's where lithium comes into the picture). By the way, I still think that hydrogen is about 7-10 years away from mainstream use.
Anyway I need to do more research but so far I am leaning towards the lithium suppliers mainly due to the resource scarcity (more than 50% of world lithium reserves are in Chile) and the pricing power that comes along with that (think fertilizer companies). The largest Chilean ion supplier is SQM (15% of 2007 revenues). Like I said I need to do more research, especially since it will make my blog less awful.
P.S. If anyone buys SQM because of this post you may lose money as a result. Make sure to do your own research before investing.
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