Risks
The USA at some stage could have a problem with their currency. They are spending recklessly, printing a lot of money (quantitative easing) and not increasing production sufficiently to offset the increased money supply. They will experience high inflation and an increase in interest rates. The higher rates will cause the US debt to be hard to sustain.
There are a lot of risks regarding the current fighting in Ukraine. Main danger is escalation. Germany, Poland, France and UK are acting very aggressively to Russia and are not showing appropriate diplomacy. If the situation escalates Russia could use a nuclear weapon for deterrence purposes. This may provoke a military reaction by NATO countries. Trade and food shortages will result.
China may be emboldened by the fighting against Russia and may attempt to invade Taiwan. Such an invasion will result in the cessation of trade with China and the Australian dollar crashing. It will also cause supply chain problems.
The Covid virus is still circulating and mutating. There is a possibility that the virus will become more virulent due to unintended consequences from the vaccination campaign. This will cause extreme food and trade shortages.
There is a possibility that AI will cause cybersecurity problems by overcoming encryption. Banking accounts and databases could be at risk. The ownership of assets is recorded electronically and details could be erased.
To avoid the consequences of these risks alternative ways of earning money may be needed. If international trade was made difficult people will need a local supply of construction products, fabrication services, clothing, vehicle parts, health products including medicines, communication equipment, computing equipment, tools and machinery. Shortages of tyres and fuel would have major consequences. Ethanol and canola oil could be used as fuel alternatives.
Opportunities
AI
AI is a huge opportunity. Similar to the internet boom there will be probably be an initial AI bubble which will crash. Following the crash there will be some great buying opportunities. Some AI exposed stocks are Tesla, Nvidia, Facebook, Apple, Google.
Green revolution
Uranium and Copper are the current metals to buy for the green revolution. Both take a long time to develop and appear to have shortages already. I am not convinced that there will be a shortage of lithium, nickel, graphite, cobalt etc. There are a number of different ways to construct batteries and economics will determine which is used. The best lithium deposits will attract development. It looks like many of them will be in the Pilbara and in the Lithium triangle of South America. The best Uranium is in the Athabasca Basin in Canada. Australia and Chile have great copper deposits.
Toyota is working with a new battery chemistry called Nyobolt. It enables charging a car battery in 6 minutes and enables 10,000 charges without degradation. The battery appears to use Niobium as the anode material. If true I would expect the price of Niobium to increase greatly. Currently it is only used in small amounts for steel production. Most of the worlds production is coming from a single mine in Brazil.
Silver is set to rise with the increased use of solar panels, currently 15% of silver production goes into making the panels. This is set to increase greatly.
