This week BMW Group announced a partnership with Sila Nanotechnologies to develop and manufacture the next generation of lithium-ion batteries. The objective is to lower the cost of the electric vehicle battery pack by improving the energy density. To do this the current graphite graphite anode is replaced by silicon.…
For hundreds of years, up until about 1900, the gold silver ratio was around 16:1, as shown in the chart below. Since then it has fluctuated widely, from about 20:1 to 100:1. At the time of writing it is 80. There is a school of thought that this ratio does…
Many believe John Maynard Keynes considered gold to be “a barbarous relic”. In actual fact he was referring to the fixed exchange rate between the British pound and gold. During WWI the combatants abandoned the gold standard to allow inflation to pay for the war. Once the war was over…
Great Boulder Resources Limited (ASX:GBR) has made a potentially extraordinary discovery of copper-nickel-cobalt mineralisation at Mt Venn, in Western Australia. Extraordinary, because Mt Venn has a remarkable past. In 1970 the share price of the then-owner, Tasminex NL, rocketed from $3.00 to $96.00. This uplift was based upon a report…
Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO of DoubleLine said in early January that a bear market would commence when the long term trendline for US 30-year Treasuries is broken, and the yield rose above 2.99%. The rate was 3.08% last Friday, the day the DOW fell 2.5%. But Gundlach, in a webcast titled “Commodities:…
In Australia a schooner of beer (about 375ml) can cost anything up to $10 (USD8 at the time of writing), depending upon the location of the bar. Taxes, both direct and indirect, make Australian alcohol among the most expensive in the world. In the case of buying a beer at…