Beginning to think ahead for what themes we want to position for

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At the start of 2025 we released our “strategy for 2025”.

We stuck to it and so far it’s working pretty well:

(Source 11 Jan 2025 - Us)

Gold up over 65% last year - we were right.

Silver was last year’s best performing commodity, up 148% - we were right.

US critical minerals are back... (so far so good for the first 2 weeks of the new year).

Our biotech ILA is up 190% and our tech pick ROC is up 413%.

So far we have been right...

(But remember that past performance is not an indicator of future performance)

The only thing we didn’t manage to find and add was a countercyclical, beaten down, later stage battery metals project...

And given that (even to ourselves) it appears like we know what we are doing, we have now found one to add to round out our 2025 strategy.

We are adding it to our Portfolio next week - stay tuned.

Battery metals (nickel, cobalt, lithium) have been on the nose for the last 3 years, and share prices of companies with advanced, later stage projects have been depressed.

...but battery metals prices have recently started “getting up off the canvas” after being brutally knocked down in 2022.

In the first 2 weeks of 2026 it’s been more like jumping up off the canvas:

According to Trading Economics, in the last month:

• Lithium is up 68%
• Nickel is up 24%
• Cobalt is up 6% (after rising over 130% in 2025)

So to finish off our now infamous “we actually got it right in 2025” strategy - we will be adding an advanced stage battery metals project next week...

(source)

(yes we know it's already 2026, but we want to complete our checklist of 2025 stocks to add... Better slightly later than never right?)

But first - US critical metals are roaring back

Nearly every stock on our overall “US critical metals” watchlist is up in the last 17 days.

Only 17 days into 2026, and the first order of business for the US Department of the Treasury is Critical Minerals:

(source)

The US government money taps are still wide open for the sector too...

Earlier in the week the US Department Of War did a US$150M direct investment in domestic gallium supply:

(source)

We also saw this one come out a few days ago:

Trump invoked Section 232 authorities to force negotiations to "ensure the United States has adequate critical mineral supplies and to mitigate the supply chain vulnerabilities as quickly as possible."

(Source)

Here are the specific metals that get mentioned in this document:

• Gallium
• Germanium
• Indium (AW1 has the biggest indium resource in the USA)
• Yttrium
• Cobalt
• Nickel
• Uranium
• Praseodymium
• Terbium
• Lithium
• Fluorite
• Bromine

(Feel free to send in any companies we should look at doing anything in a few of those obscure, hard to pronounce metals/minerals)

Another critical mineral getting a lot of attention right now is Tungsten.

Tungsten has military uses in munitions (bullets), vehicles and body armour, missiles and radiation shielding. The USA is 100% beholden to imports of this critical military mineral.

And tungsten prices are currently trading at all time highs. (source)

Here are news articles from just the last 24 hours:

(Source)

Good news for our stocks with USA-based tungsten projects - Resolution Minerals (ASX: RML) and our latest Investment Viking Mines (ASX: VKA) - click the links to read our Investment Memo for each company.

Gold and silver are still firing too...

US Fed chair Jerome Powell put out what looked like a hostage video - it was so surreal to see we had to double and triple check it wasn’t AI generated...

(source)

Basically, it’s the US Fed Chair Jerome Powell accusing the US government of putting forward a legal case for criminal charges against him for budget discrepancies on some building works.

But the market is really interpreting it as the US government going after him because he is refusing to lower interest rates.

In the market’s eyes, IF the FED is no longer independent then trust in the USD as the global reserve currency is threatened.

(and of course, things like gold and silver - alternatives to the USD are favoured instead...)

See our take on that here: US Fed Chair Powell subpoenaed - silver and gold both hit NEW all time highs.

Battery metals are back too? Can we just call them “robot metals” please?

Lithium, nickel and cobalt (remember those?)

Back in 2020 everyone in the market piled in because battery powered electric vehicles were going to take over the world and they needed “battery metals” to build them.

(remember when every exploration company investor deck started with a photo of an EV plugged into an EV charger? instead of now an F16 fighter jet or a ballistic missile)

Anyway, the EV story kinda fizzled out, but it turns out that batteries are still going to form a very important part of our future.

Especially for autonomous AI robots.

Including autonomous AI robots in the home:

(source)

Autonomous AI robots for industrial and factory uses:

And autonomous AI robots for war:

We are talking billions and billions of robots to be built...

What about the metals and materials needed to build these robots?

There are grams of various metals in a phone...

Versus roughly ~60kg of metals and materials in a standard humanoid house robot...

Typical metals and materials for a humanoid robot include aluminium alloys, steel, stainless steel, titanium, magnesium and magnesium‐aluminium alloys, copper, and brass; battery metals such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, and sometimes iron (in lithium‐iron‐phosphate cells) and light and heavy rare earths.

Multiply this by potentially billions of robots...

It's starting to sound like the 2020-2022 battery metals boom could come back with a vengeance.

(only this time with a completely different story).

In an Elon Musk interview from a few days ago, he predicts that 10 billion robots by 2040 is “a low estimate” (watch where he says it here)

(Tesla’s Optimus home robot first sales are expected in late 2026 or early 2027)

He isn’t the only one who thinks “the robots are coming”:

(Source)

A couple of days ago, Jason Calacanis (from the All in Pod) made a big call on the future of AI robots after visiting Elon Musk’s Optimus robot factory:

(watch it here - or don't, you can read what he said below)

“ I went to Tesla with Elon and visited the Optimus lab.”

“There were a large number of people working on a Sunday at 10AM, and I saw Optimus 3.”

“I can tell you now, nobody will remember that Tesla ever made a car, they will only remember the Optimus.”

“He is going to make a billion of those, and it is going to be the most transformative technology product ever made in the history of humanity, because what LLMs are going to enable those products to do is understand the world and then do things in the world that we don't want to do.”

“I believe it'll be a 1-to-1 ratio of humans to Optimus, and I think he's already won.”

Will Nostracanis be right?

Two days ago Elon Musk just casually mentioned that his company Tesla had started up the largest lithium refinery in the USA...

(source)

(source)

A strong signal he is serious about battery metals supply for his ambitions.

The question here is how quickly this “AI robot" boom is going to happen?

And where on earth are all these “robot materials” to make billions of robots going to come from?

Nickel to win from Elon’s Optimus robot buildout?

Remember back in 2020 we were breathlessly excited when Elon Musk mentioned the need for “more Nickel” at Tesla Battery Day 2020?

(watch the key video snippet here)

Looks like Elon’s preferred battery chemistry hasn't changed in the last ~5 years...

Tesla’s choice of battery chemistry for its robots strategy seems to be heavily nickel based batteries.

Nickel based batteries are usually preferred for higher performance applications because of their superior energy density/efficiency relative to other battery chemistries:

Despite what we think is a generational 5-10-15 year tailwind... nickel is probably one of the most hated commodities right now - the market ripping in other sectors doesn’t help nickel’s cause either...

It starves companies with good nickel assets of capital as investors rotate cash into sectors that are more in favour.

That means there are serious companies out there with solid, advanced nickel assets at what we think are cheap prices.

Nickel prices are up in recent weeks too, maybe a few more weeks of that and all of a sudden the market stops hating nickel?

(source)

(it wasn’t that long ago there was a short squeeze due to a lack of supply... that was only 5 years ago)

We think it wouldn't take much to get things going and for the market to start to assume a more positive supply/demand outlook for nickel.

(especially if Elon and others build billions of those battery metal hungry Optimus robots).

In the shorter term - it could just be export control news out of Indonesia (which has been responsible for the supply glut in the market at ~60% of global supply).

Interestingly, there have been rumors of restrictions being considered by the Indonesian government:

(source)

(source)

Who knows what happens, all we know is that in five years’ time, as it always does, the market could have a completely different view on the future of the nickel industry.

Here is a pretty good summary from a Crux Investor interview we listened to today:

(source)

Lithium is up, cobalt is also up...

Maybe battery metals will end up morphing into “robot metals” as a macro thematic after all...

All that needs to happen is for the market to see and then start believing Elon (or anyone else) can execute that humanoid AI robot rollout.

And then a few million robots will mean millions (if not billions) of tonnes of metals needed to build them.

So 17 days into 2026, we are talking about a robot future...

Things are moving very quickly around the world and it feels like something massive happens almost on a daily basis.

Let’s see what next week has in store for us...

For now, have a great weekend,

Next Investors