The next supply squeeze that may take markets by surprise isn’t lithium. It isn’t even a battery metal …
While everyone is distracted by the media barrage surrounding EVs, another commodity may be creating an investment opportunity to rival all …
We think it’s potentially bigger than the cannabis boom that reportedly netted some investors 1,000% gains.
It’s helium.
And some experts say we’re running out of it.
It’s not just a niche commodity anymore. It’s not just about balloons. And we think it’s positioned to become the focus of increased investor interest.
Like oil and gas, this is about exploration, discovery, and development. And we think the biggest returns may end up coming from the small-cap explorers trying to hit the big time with a new discovery - all on their own.
Growing Helium Demand
Demand for helium is increasing, and it’s coming from multiple sectors, including everything from the tech and biomedical industries, to space, medical equipment and national security. And, yes, of course, party balloons and Thanksgiving Day parades.
Many industries require helium.
It’s been reported that the tech industry has been a massive catalyst, and that 2013 was a game-changing year for helium supply.
That’s when the world’s first ‘helium drives’ were made commercially available, making helium a key ingredient to fill our monstrous appetite for data.
Some 3.7 billion people are generating some 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every single day. And even those numbers may grow by up to 60% a year. By 2025, it is projected to be more like 160 zettabytes per year. Helium drives were apparently a breakthrough that replaced the air in hard drives with helium to reduce the energy used. They went from concept to commercialization in 2013.
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX)--all are said to need tons of it for their massive data centers.
We think demand is set to surge into the helium-driven territory of zettabytes.
And the growing semiconductor market may depend on helium, too. Why? Because helium can bring temperatures down to below -450 degrees Fahrenheit--lower even than liquid nitrogen. This is important for superconducting equipment in particle accelerators and the magnets used to build semiconductors, according to Forbes.
Driving this further is a global computer chip shortage.
In Geneva, Switzerland, the Large Haldron Collider (LHC), the largest high-energy particle accelerator on Earth--and the biggest machine in the world, needs a truckload of helium every week.
Nor does the demand story end there …
The health sector is another major driver of helium demand. It’s also critical for use in cooling magnets in MRI machines. Without helium, we won’t have working MRIs. The shortage also threatens NMRs--nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which in turn is a crucial aspect of medical research.
Two small cap stocks to consider
Royal Helium - RHC.v Desert Mountain Energy - DME.v
Submitted May 03, 2021 at 12:22AM by BandicootBeginning85 https://ift.tt/3391Oh7
