The trendiest electric vehicle metal right now is cobalt.Since October, Google Trends shows interest in cobalt for batteries more than tripling. Have a look:Meanwhile the price of cobalt has been soaring. Over the past 12 months, cobalt prices are up over 110%. In the past two years, they have ballooned some 275%.Cobalt is the hottest EV material right now. But there's one major factor that could...Read More

Few people know that the west side of 5th Street in Des Moines, Iowa, once held an incredible secret.Beneath a simple jewelry store, a lone chemist by the name of William Morrison built his lab. He was attracted to the quiet, a place he could conduct his powerful experiments.Don't beat yourself up if you've never heard of him before.Up until recently, I hadn't either.An immigrant from Scotland, Mo...Read More

A few months ago I picked up a 2010 Ford Mustang GT. It's a Kona blue convertible with saddle leather interior and 15,000 miles on it, and it goes off the line to 60 in 4.9 seconds. It's a nice ride that gets about 19 miles to the gallon.Over New Year's, I found myself at one of these exurbia McMansion parties talking to a guy whose family made a fortune in potato chips, of all things. Standing be...Read More

The hydrogen fuel cell industry continued to grow in 2017.But the future of hydrogen as fuel is still uncertain.London-based sustainable energy consultant E4tech estimates the global fuel cell industry increased megawatts shipped by 30% to 670 MW last year compared to 2016. And considering even bigger increases in previous years, E4tech says industry volumes have more than tripled in the past thre...Read More

The last time I got into a row over oil prices with Christian DeHaemer, the U.S. oil industry was in a far different state.It was years ago, before the Bakken in North Dakota became a household name.Back then, our shouting matches would reach a crescendo in the office, and he just happened to always take the opposing position. When I suggested in early 2007 that oil was about to make a run to $100...Read More

While Elon Musk and Tesla fight to dominate the lithium battery-powered vehicle market, Hyundai is still placing bets on hydrogen.The South Korean carmaker unveiled its latest generation of hydrogen fuel cell EVs (FCEVs), called the Nexo, at CES in Las Vegas this week. The Nexo is Hyundai's latest evolution of its ix35 FCEV, which first began very limited production in 2013.The Nexo is one of the...Read More

Sin City is alive with technology this week.The Consumer Electronics Show has taken over the town, and some of the most exciting tech companies on the planet are here.Yet, despite all the latest and greatest gadgets that are on display, the only thing anyone can seem to talk about is where they're getting their weed.So many out-of-towners aren't used to it yet, but in Nevada, you can walk into any...Read More

You Can Profit from Bad CorporationsFor years, corporations have put profits over people. Coal companies blow the top off mountains, chemical companies release poisonous fumes, social media companies run psychological experiments without consent...But perhaps one of the most hypocritical companies was Volkswagen. In the United States, at least, VW sold itself as some pseudo-hippy, tree-hugger, eco...Read More

The most hated group of people in history isn't women.It isn't African-Americans.It isn't homosexuals.And it's not any religious group.The most hated group of people in history is the ultra-wealthy. It's the top 0.01%.Now, before you start sending hate mail, please consider the numbers first...Women represent more than half of the total population. Women aren't even a minority in terms of populati...Read More

One day after Jeff Sessions announced new prohibitionist policies designed to crackdown on the legal cannabis market, cannabis stocks are back up. This market cannot be stopped, and this is how we're playing it.Read More

Several North American and European auto manufacturers are betting the electric vehicle revolution will be led by the further development of lithium-ion batteries. Tesla is the obvious leader in battery electric vehicles (BEV). But Chevy and Ford are among others focusing on BEVs.Japanese carmakers, on the other hand, seem to have a different idea. They're wagering on hydrogen fuel cells.Over the...Read More

Jeff Sessions is waving his prohibitionist sword again, and the market is destroying pot stocks. But don't worry. It's only temporary. In fact, we're now looking to pick up some really nice bargains.Read More

It wasn't even midnight yet when I was asked, "So, what's your New Year's resolution?"With a straight face and a nice buzz, I responded, "I don't do New Year's resolutions."Not to sound brash, but I think New Year's resolutions are cop-outs.They're glimmers of hope for folks who typically can't commit to anything worthwhile for more than a few days.We see it all the time.This year, I'm going to ge...Read More

Last year I predicted that oil, specifically West Texas Intermediate, would end the year with a price of $61.55 a barrel. On the last trading day of the year, it closed at $60.28. I apologize for falling short.As I write this, WTI is trading at $60.85, and it is in a solid uptrend. The price of crude has been going up since January of 2016. As you can see by the chart above, it is now at a crucia...Read More

It's the next big cryptocurrency...And it's better than Bitcoin in many ways.It's completely anonymous, decentralized, divisible, fungible, uniform, widely recognized, and has a very limited supply...Gold.2017 was the year of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. But gold didn't fare too poorly, either. In fact, gold ended the year on its best rally since 2011.2017 was the year of Bitcoin. But 2018 will b...Read More

1. Artificial intelligence is a big deal and will change the world in massive ways.You've been hearing about the coming of the singularity for some time now. The singularity is the hypothesis that the invention of artificial super-intelligence will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization.The idea is that an upgradable intelligent agent...Read More

Bitcoin is not completely worthless. But those who believe the cryptocurrency is going to usher in some kind of new Utopian era for humanity are either a.) purposely lying or b.) completely stupid.A new documentary called Magic Money: The Bitcoin Revolution calls the cryptocurrency the "biggest financial revolution the world has ever seen" and claims, "For the first time in history money is no lo...Read More

Every year I put out a list of predictions for the next year. The goal here is to find solid and profitable trends that you can make money on, rather than predict fantastical black swan events that may or may not happen.For your comedic pleasure, here are last year's predictions with comments. Let's see if I was a champ or a chump.Last year I wrote:1. Rates: range bound between 1.60% and 3%.The 1...Read More

I was first introduced to the concept of "peak oil" 15 years ago. It was a simple theory: Oil is a finite resource. At some point in time, the world's ability to increase oil production would ultimately "peak." And this peak would be followed by a terminal decline in global output.The theory has been around for almost a century. But the man who popularized the idea was an American geophysicist na...Read More

It was 2004 when we had our first holiday party.It was me, the owner of Angel Publishing, his wife, and a former coworker.We dined on a huge plate of sushi and talked about all the great things that were in store for the coming year.Fast-forward to 2017, when last Friday I gathered with 50 coworkers as we celebrated the holidays in a private suite at Camden Yards.The company that's been bringing y...Read More