Argentina - the Black Swan in Minerals

The rebirth of laissez-faire in Argentina (and mining?)

Author

David Williams
May 13, 2024

💡What’s New: Argentina is rapidly adopting open-market policies.

🤔 Opinion: I prefer commodities over miners, transport over minerals.

🛠️ Tools & Data: Free tools and AI to accelerate your R&D projects.

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💡What’s new

In Dec, 2023 Javier Milei became the president of Argentina, the 4th largest producer of Lithium in the world. Mr. Milei was not supposed to win. Polling showed he was a black-swan event that represented an unlikely return to Austrian economics for the region. Since that time, he has been called the leader of free-market capitalism in the West. Within the region, his populist sentiment is spilling over to Uruguay, Chile, and Brazil. Some defining events have taken place in the region:

  • Brazil struggles with political turmoil over its presidential election and questions about censorship,

  • Chile elects a socialist president and soon after nationalizes its mineral assets

  • Elon Musk visits Argentina and thereafter recommends investing in the economy.

Here are recent headlines from the region for insight on what’s coming:

🤔 Opinion

Commodities are performing better than the miners who recover them (see latest Katusa Research report, subscription required).

Copper futures shoot up ~15% in the past month

Lithium has finally reversed its bearish trend

Nickel bullish trend confirmed

Meanwhile companies like BHP aren’t showing the same growth. Glad I stayed out of the recent chop since the last post.

Now I am asking myself, “Is it time to start trading in minerals?” We’re entering an interesting period. Regardless of who wins the next US election, America will need a lot of minerals – assuming the US does not fall into deep recession.

Two broad scenarios are forming:

  • Biden wins – more foreign minerals with local recycling.

  • Trump wins – expect more domestic mining.

Either way, there is a strong argument for positioning to take advantage of the mineral binge coming from electric vehicles, AI chips, and infrastructure development.

My interests lie in processing and logistics.

Regardless of where minerals will be extracted, they will need to be shipped. That will mean ships and trains. If you have a quick minute, take a look at the shipping and transport indexes, not to mention many existing companies in bear trends due to geopolitical risks.

If geopolitical risks increase, perhaps shipping performs well anyway. And it seems likely that there will be turmoil throughout Europe, especially Eastern Europe, for the foreseeable future. So I am avoiding that geography (with rare exceptions as I do like Estonia’s business-friendly atmosphere).

There are bright spots for free enterprise appearing all over the world. As many nations continue their transitions toward digital economies, I am watching closely to take advantage of opportunities. Hope you are too.

🛠️ Tools and Data

Tools, data, and papers to speed your R&D.

An Indoor Geospatial Tracking Dataset with Distributed Multimodal Sensors

Pure-Python conversion library for common geospatial data formats.

A command-line tool for batch uploading image and table assets to Google Earth Engine

A collection of papers and code for CVPR2024 low-level vision AI.

Geospatial data structures, tools and utilities for Dart and Flutter app development.

Open-source projects and sample codes from AWS Geospatial

An ecosystem of geospatial tools and libraries written in Rust.

a PyTorch domain library, similar to torchvision, providing datasets, samplers, transforms, and pre-trained models specific to geospatial data.

A curated list of awesome SAR software, libraries, and resources.

Remote Sensing AI: https://github.com/RSandAI

Code and results from GeoAI research conducted under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Elif SERTEL at Istanbul Technical University.

Code, tools and documentation on how to investigate vessel travel history, ownership, inspections and related info.

Exploration of deep learning-based Hyperspectral imaging techniques

System for monitoring mineral extraction and processing, as well as managing various resources of mines and mining companies (including vehicles, financial resources, and employees)

A CrewAI-driven platform designed to facilitate disaster response and recovery efforts using satellite technology.

Thanks for reading! Want me to look into a particular topic? Email your suggestions and and I will dig.