Ferg's Finds

This is a short weekly email that covers a few things I’ve found interesting during the week.

Article

Goehring & Rozencwajg Q2 Commentary: What is the cost of being early?

These are always a must-read for me. I found this section particularly interesting, considering their past pieces were very bullish on copper.

The game for me is hanging out in commodities starved of capital, yet essential for humanity. (which I touched on in my recent met coal piece).

I'm not interested in copper, lithium, iron ore which are having billions thrown at them (Capex for 30 biggest-spending miners to rise 6.2% in 2023).

Podcast/Video

No one has a better grasp of energy than Vaclav: Webinar The energy sector in the world. Perspectives» with Vaclav Smil

Quote

“Establishing and maintaining an unconventional investment profile requires acceptance of uncomfortably idiosyncratic portfolios, which frequently appear downright imprudent in the eyes of conventional wisdom. Unless institutions maintain contrarian positions through difficult times, the resulting damage of buying high and selling low imposes severe financial and reputational costs on the institution.”

― David F. Swensen

Tweet

It's interesting to see the decline in oil prices and declining inventories. The last two periods of oil weakness were during inventory builds (2018 and 2020).

Charts

I occasionally play around with Google Trends to check the popularity of terms and compare them to others.

I'm not sure how actionable it is, but I find it interesting regardless.

For this search, I used lithium (the poster child for "Green/transition") and compared it against uranium.

During the last uranium bull market, interest (via searches) was similar, but the gap has widened (bar that spike in 2016).

It’s interesting the below ratio of searches holds steady across most countries.

Something I'm Pondering

I'm pondering the impact of LNG trucks on my oil and PGM thesis, having read a few of these articles.

Chase at Pinecone Macro put out a great brief running through some of the numbers, which I recommend you check out.

I hope you’re all having a great week.

Cheers,

Ferg 

P.S. If you’re interested in my story and why I started this Substack, you can read the story here.