How I Missed Out on 💼 900%+ Returns! 😱 🙅‍♂️ Plus, a breakthrough in room temp superconductivity?

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Hey – David here. In this edition of DRIFFT you’ll get:

💡What’s New: Mining or AI - which is more important today?

🤔 Opinion: Hold your horses, or how to miss 900% returns.

🛠️ Tools: AI tools and helpful news feeds to stay ahead of the curve.

Want to feature your service or product in DRIFFT? Grab an ad spot here.

💡What’s new

• A recent arxiv paper claiming superconductivity at room temp!

• Will growing pressure on Cobalt miners raise smartphone prices?

• Wow! Stanford has a tech research group focused on minerals!

• Imagine if people had to list their personal accomplishments this way.

• It looks like mines can play a role in CO2 sequestration.

• Seems the US recognizes its urgent need for mining (tech).

• Geological Survey tasks DARPA > DARPA tasks opensource devs.

• USGS has a news feed on minerals and mining

• Read about the latest advances in deep sea mining in this paper.

• It’s not long before robots are doing complex human tasks.

• Could mining education be an interesting niche for professionals?

• More and more mining datasets like this one are starting to appear.

• How will ESG scores fare against demand for energy? Let’s see.

• Please explain why a mining behemoth is now a public utility.

• US lags China in STEM experts, and therein lies mining opportunities.

• China + Afghanistan: Copper makes strange bedfellows.

• US. v. China is playing out on a global corporate scale.

• Huawei is building AI applications for mining.

• Interesting regulatory change tracker by Brookings.

• Columbia business on critical minerals in Zambia and Zimbabwe.

🤔 Opinion: Hold your Horses

It’s helpful to review past investments, especially the older ones. This week I revisited my pre-COVID holdings and realized I’d missed out on massive gains in my (still young) commodities career. Hopefully you can learn from my mistake. Here’s the story.

Several years ago I bought SLB and FCX.

At the time, both companies fit my ideal business profile:

1. defensible - FCX controls the largest gold mine in the world, and SLB was innovative and an early adopter of AI;

2. low p/e - they traded much lower than usual through no apparent fault other than market dynamics;

3. dividends - steady and healthy, which ensured some return and boosted earnings if there were any;

4. market demand - solid for what the companies were providing, even though indices were weighting them down.

I held for about two years until I’d made ~20% and sold. That’s when my big mistake was made.

I walked away.

There’s no fault in pocketing a healthy return. But I didn’t keep going. I thought that if I scored a win I should move on. Now I understand that profitable investments are not throw-away. Just because I made money on one doesn’t mean its dead. Most tradable assets keep on trading. If one becomes successful, I know there’s money there. And I am familiar with the asset’s history and quirks. Why throw that away? If I had stuck with it, I could have banked over 900% gains.

Don’t be too hasty. There will always be another asset. The one that’s making you money today is worth more than all the others that aren’t.

My father used to tell me: David, hold your horses. How valuable that advice can be!

🛠️ Tools and Data

Tools for your daily tasks

1. miniGPT4 - lightweight self-contained chatbot using opensource model and weights, https://github.com/Vision-CAIR/MiniGPT-4 

2. Top AI Tools - Useful list of AI tools that’s updated regularly, https://github.com/ghimiresunil/Top-AI-Tools

3. USGS Apps - news feed on applications related to minerals and mining, https://www.usgs.gov/search?keywords=Mineral%20Resource%20Applications

4. ToolFormer - Meta’s attempt to enable language models to use tools, https://github.com/lucidrains/toolformer-pytorch

5. LabLab - a blend between HuggingFace and Kaggle.

Favorite Graphic(s) of the Week

A reminder that there are forces tugging between two futures: one with coal and one without. The market vs. They / Them. I am not ready to say that coal is dead.

Share DRIFFT

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Thanks for reading! I am here for you. Want me to look into a particular topic? Email your suggestions and feedback to get in touch. See you soon!

David