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Speaker 1: Strategic metals. It's not a sort of academic or our

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scientific term, but strategic metals are well, let's say the

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US Geological Survey lists about forty five maybe fifty metals

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which are strategic and critical to all nations, not just

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North America, but to all nations economic prosperity and increasingly

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military capabilities.

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Speaker 2: You're listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, where you

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get valuable information you just can't find anywhere else to

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thrive in today's trying times. You need the Financial Survival

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Network now more than ever. Go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot

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com and get your free newsletter and gift. Financial Survival

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Network now more than ever.

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Speaker 3: And welcome. You are listening to and watching the Financial

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Survival Network. I'm your host Carrie Let's Interesting Guests today.

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You know, when we talk about metals on this show,

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we're usually talking about gold, silver, to a lesser degree, platinum.

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You even mentioned rhodium once in a while. But the

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person you're about to hear from, Lewis O'Connor, the website

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Strategic Metal Metals invest dot com seen since twenty twenty Loot.

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Welcome to the show. We've seen one hundred and sixteen

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percent return not quite as good as gold and silver,

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well little better than silver, a little less than gold.

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What is a strategic metal? How do you own them?

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Especially rare earths? You know, I don't really have storage

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facilities here for lithium, and it's highly combustible in its

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native form, And I wouldn't know what to do with

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rare earths other than to make them into magnets. I

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think there's nothing else to two. How do you play

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this market?

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Speaker 1: Okay, So I guess I'll give you the definition first,

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because there probably are a few definitions strategic metals. It's

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not a sort of academic or or scientific term, but

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strategic metals are well, let's say the US Geological Survey

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lists about forty five, maybe fifty metals which are strategic

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and critical to the to the to all nations, not

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just North America, but to all nations economic prosperity, and

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increasingly military capabilities. So the metals we'll talk today about

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are more of a subdivision of those. So the first

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thing people should know about US carry is you rightly

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pointed out, you know, the only end buyer or end

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user for these raw materials or tesla or Apple or

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US Department of Defense, and and you know, ordinary civilians

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sort of have no way of storing them safely and

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stuff like that. So the first thing people should know

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about us is that are more business is we're an

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industry supplier of strategic metals, so we're in business in

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that on that side since nineteen ninety nine. We're twenty

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five years in business, so eighty five percent of our

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business activities were based in Europe. I'm in Ireland at

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the moment, but where our main office is in Frankfurt

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and Germany, and we have a logistics distribution platform there

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where we buy metals, mostly from China at the moment,

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and we resell them to four thousand different clients in

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seventy four different countries, so manufacturers, industry buyers. We're also

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a Tier one supplier to quite a few blue ship companies.

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So that's our core business. And if that wasn't our

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core business, we'd have no business doing what I'm about

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to discuss with you today, which is we have a

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side business or as you guys in America call a

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side hustle, although it's a little bit bigger on that now.

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Our side hustle is we invite private investors to participate

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in the supply chain. And out of that forty five

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or fifty, there's only about eight or ten that are

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relevant as physical assets to private investors. And I'll talk

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about any of them if you want today, and I'll

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tell you what the characteristics are of what determines them

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how do they get on the list to being relevant

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as a physical asset. But yet, just to cover your point,

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you said, look, there's no point in you or I

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have a lithium you know, you know, in fact, I

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don't even know if the US customs would allow you

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imported because they all have you know, civilian and military applications.

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But yeah, we are private investors by the raw materials

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from US. They physically own them, but we recommend they

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store them in our sister company, which is Mechlock, which

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is a storage facility that has the largest inventory of

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rare earts anywhere outside of China. And when our clients

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have stored there, means they also have access to our

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more than four thousand clients around the globe when they're

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ready to liquidate.

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Speaker 3: Got it all right? So uh, tell us what these

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metals are and why they're worth so much.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so gallium, germanium, indium, rhenium. Those are some of

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the technology metals where ertz dysprosium, neodymium, per seodymium, neodymium.

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They have very very unique qualities. Neodymium can hold one thousand,

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three hundred times its own weight independently, So they're they're

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they're there. They're conductors, their semiconductors. They can withstand very

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very high temperatures, so they have multiple applications there asology.

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You could say they're the upstream raw materials that ultimately

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become trillions of dollars in downstream GDP, TESLA need them,

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Apple need them, Department of Defense needs them, aviation space technology. Look,

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we live and funny enough, actually, somebody recently said that

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in Europe, and this was the President of the European Union,

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said that where earths are fast becoming as important, maybe

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even more important than oil and gas. So as we

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pivot from oil to metals, rare earths are the new

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frontline in geopolitical decisions. I mean proof of that is

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you know President Trump mentioned critical rare earth minerals in Ukraine.

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You know, Greenland is a big lump of ice, so

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you know, the main interest ere resources as well, so

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and that are very very important and they're they're now

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being used as leverage in in you know, in in

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national security interests.

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Speaker 3: Right, okay, so I kind of get that, and it's

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kind of like that think from avatar unobtainingum right yeah

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yeah yeah, So so what kind of vehicle do you

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have for investing in these things?

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Speaker 1: So we invite private investors to own just like same

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paradigm as as gold and silver, they can physically own

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the raw materials. Our minimum investment is only ten dollars,

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So we recommend people start small, you know, build a

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position over time, learn about you know, the raw materials

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on which ones are defense metals, which are energy transition,

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which are aviation. And we'll help people get educated in

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that regard. And we recommend like to be if I

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can speak completely sort of frank and be sincere, which

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you carry m like, we don't have ten different offers.

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We don't also offer crypto or agriculture or a tem

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or yeah. Yeah. Now the reason I'm saying that is

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we only know one business and that's where an industry supplier.

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So we you know, we we have a unique if

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you will winning as well investment strategy. And what we

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like to do is get people educated and tell them

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what the strategy is. And once they have that strategy,

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if they'd like to come on board, do But if

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they're not aligned with the strategy, then don't. We don't

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want day traders or we don't want people coming in

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thinking you want to make you know, millions of dollars

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and six months or eight months. We recommend a whole

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of a minimum three years, five years, even longer, and

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we recommend diversifying your purchase so you're you're not just

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invested in defense, you're invested in all modern technology, aviation,

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medical devices, you name it, all.

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Speaker 3: Right, and yeah, so, but these metals really aren't that rare.

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It's just that China has basically monopolized the entire right,

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the entire market for them.

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Speaker 1: Correct, Correct, China has an unrivaled dominance. And you are right,

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despite the name, they're not always that rare some of them.

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There're seventeen rare arts and there's only four that we

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offer to private investors. So those are the one. I'll

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tell you what the characteristics are. One is diversification. We

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only offer the metals that actually have the most applications

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in manufacturing today. Two, which ones are in the most

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demand right at the moment. Obviously, artificial intelligence everybody's talking

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about AI runs on data, but it relies on rare

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earths for the magnets and the sensors, the cooling systems,

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also the computer chips. I should say, so these are

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we look at which ones you know, have had the

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most applications and are in the most demand. We also

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look which ones are the rarest, which ones are the

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least in production. Halftium is a good example. There's only

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seventy to ninety tons of half theium produced a year,

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which you could sort of fit on the back of

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a small truck. But here's where it gets interesting. These

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rare materials, they do not occur naturally in the Earth's crust.

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They're always a byproduct of another raw material. So half

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theiums are byproductors are conium mining. For every fifty tons

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or their conium, you get one ton of affnium. That's

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why China sort of has this sort of dominance at

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the moment. The last thing is is that particular reason,

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which is whereas their heavy sort of localized production, where's

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the supply concentration risk, and those are the four characteristics

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that determine that.

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Speaker 3: Okay, so small markets mostly dominated by China, but the

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potential exists and it's being worked on now to actually

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build additional capacity throughout the world. How long is that

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going to take?

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Speaker 1: Well, the average you know, obviously, I know your audience's US,

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so I'll give you some US examples. The average time

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from maiden discovery to being to production in America recently

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for a minus twenty nine years. So even though you

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know there's MP materials and minerals, I should say in

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California they produce rare earths, but at the moment they

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still have to sell most of their raw materials to

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China for pro processing. So it's not the fact, as

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you pointed out earlier, that they're there's for example, there's

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five hundred thousand abandoned coal mines in the US that

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have mind tailings. There's rare earths there, but the engineering expertise,

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the human capital doesn't exist in Europe or the US.

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The process these materials, they have to be extracted, they'll

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be separated, and they have to be re metallized. It's

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more of a metallurgical process than a mining process two

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purity levels of you know, nineteen nine point ninety nine

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nine percent. You know, that could be in the engine

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of an F thirty five jet, or it's nuclear sub

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or whatever whatever. So so China is about a generation

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ahead of Europe and the rest of the world in

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terms of the metallurgical process. And and i'd imagine you know,

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you're right, there's the will is there, and the political

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will is there are now and to weaner dependence off China,

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but that's going to take time. It didn't happen overnight,

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and it'll take a bit of time to remedy.

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Speaker 3: Remedy right now. I've read that even though China is

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attempting to control these markets, there's a huge smuggling market

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where they smuggle the rare earth's out of China. Is

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that correct?

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Speaker 1: Yes, China has certainly teamed up the market a lot.

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I mean, they've really consolidated since the nineteen eighties. But yeah,

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there there's you know, there at one point there were

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roague mines. Even that's that's sort of non existent. But yeah,

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I mean they're a valuable commodity and anything can you know,

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anything that would would exist in the normal sort of

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trade and stuff exists with.

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Speaker 3: This, Okay, all right, So you got to tell us

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where we find you, Lou, how we connect with you

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on the web.

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Speaker 1: Sure, our website is www dot Strategic Metals Invest dot com.

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And if somebody wants he made me direct and mention

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your name, carry it's Louis l o U, I s

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at Strategic Metalsinvest dot com and I'll be sure to answer.

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Speaker 3: Them, all right, And you'll find a link in the

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show notes for this interview that will take you to

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Lose Sight. And while you're there, it's on Financial Survival

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Network dot com. We just asked that you sign up

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for a free newsletter. Take a look at the book

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that we're offering the world. According to Martin Armstrong Conversations

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with the Master Forecaster, Lou appreciate you coming on and

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it's going to be interesting to watch see how this

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whole thing unfolds. And we will talk to you again soon.

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Speaker 1: Thanks Gerry, thanks for listening to Carrie.

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Speaker 2: Let's this Financial Survival Network your solution to today's trying times.

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For the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial

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Survival Network now more than ever