Ryan Fitzwater: Good morning and welcome to Market Wake-Up Call. I'm Ryan Fitzwater standing in for your regular host, Steve McDonald. Today I have the Club's Resource Strategist Sean Brodrick with me. He's going to tell us about an energy metal that is about to take off. Welcome, Sean. Sean Brodrick: Hi! Thanks for having me on, Ryan. Ryan Fitzwater: Thanks for coming to my show. So you've been writing a lot about lithium in Energy & Resources Digest and Oxford Resource Explorer. Can you explain what lithium is and why it's such an important resource? Sean Brodrick: Well, lithium is a metal that can be used for energy storage. It has great properties for that, and so it's used in everything from your cellphone to, you know, electric car batteries – all that stuff. And it's used more and more every single day. And it's already been on a great run. We've had a great price rise. But recently, there's been information coming out that things are only accelerating. The thing about lithium – it's not traded on an exchange. The only information we get is from private deals that are done. But the most recent price quotes to come out from companies like Galaxy Resources or Orocobre, ones like that, are higher than the ones we last heard from the Chinese, and the Chinese buy most of the lithium in the world. And this is probably due to the fact that for a while there were a dozen gigafactories being built around the world to build massive amounts of these lithium batteries. But now there's 14 – two more were announced in Asia – and so this is increasing the supply-demand squeeze and raising the price curve into next year, and so that's very exciting. Ryan Fitzwater: Right, Sean. You mentioned the gigafactories, and analysts estimate we'll need over a 1,500% increase in the lithium supply over the next decade. So could you explain the lithium supply and demand situation and what's driving that? Sean Brodrick: Sure. One thing people have to be aware of is people really making guesstimates. There's no way to really know, right? And so 1,500% sounds like a lot. It might be that much, it might be more, it might be less – we don't know. But here's what we do know: There are only a few places in the world where you can mine lithium profitably at current prices. And even though it's a very common element, it doesn't clump up except in a few places. And so right now those few places have contracts for the lithium they have. They are making contracts for the future lithium they're going to mine. And where is the other lithium going to come after that? Nevada might be one place... places up in Canada. They can increase production in places like Argentina and Australia. But that's the question the world is wrestling with. Lithium is such a useful metal. Where will we get the new supplies? And you can't bring a mine online overnight, can you? I mean, it takes years to actually ramp these things up. And so that's a problem that the world has to deal with – there might be a supply squeeze. And the way supply squeezes are usually resolved in the market is through price. Ryan Fitzwater: So what's the best way to play this trend? Sean Brodrick: Well, there are lots of things people can do. I have some recommendations in Oxford Resource Explorer, but for people who aren't doing a lot of research – and I mean, you have to do a tremendous amount of research in this area, because there are some dogs as well as some thoroughbreds. But they could buy the Global X Lithium ETF (NYSE: LIT), which is a group of explorers, developers and miners in this area. The symbol is LIT. That's one easy way to play it – might not be the best way, but unless you are willing to do lots of research or else pay someone who is doing lots of research, that's an easy way into it. Ryan Fitzwater: Right, and as you said in the Oxford Resource Explorer and in your back-end service, Gold & Resource Profit Hunter, you are doing some lithium plays. So if anyone else is looking for anything outside of the Lithium ETF that Sean just talked about, you can definitely check out those services as well. Well, Sean, thanks for joining us today. Sean Brodrick: Thanks very much for having me. Ryan Fitzwater: And that's it for this week's Market Wake-Up Call. We'll see you all next time. [End of Audio]