Greetings Wild Speculator Contrarian,

This is The Next Big Rush, your daily drop of mining/energy investing news. Where we come together and don't look at our accounts since it's all red anyway.

Here are the few survivors:

😇 LAC Gets $650m

😇 Junior Finds High-grade Copper

💪🏼 Lithium Americas Gets Fat Cheque to Develop Thacker Pass Mine

GM enters the building, pulls out a massive cheque (after, we believe, an inordinate amount of paperwork and lawyerisms back and forth) in the value of $650m for Lithium Americas (NYSE: LAC) (TSX:LAC) to develop their Northern Nevada deposit Thacker Pass. Not quite, but follow along..

The investment will be divided into two portions. The first portion, $320 million, will be placed in escrow until specific conditions are fulfilled, including some permitting shennanigans in the US District Court.

This amount gives GM the exclusive rights to the initial stage of lithium production at Thacker Pass and nearly 10% of the miner's shares, with an additional $330 million to come later.

The second payment will occur after the Thacker Pass mine has been separated from Lithium Americas' Argentine operations, renamed as Lithium International, as announced in November.

As the company's market cap was approximately C$4b-5b during negotiations, the premium is obviously a confirmation that auto makers are desperate eager to secure supplies.

The question is: does this signal even more speculation upwards in the lithium market? Or is it sign of an intermediate top?

Lithium Americas is planning the open-pit project’s output to reach 60,000 tonnes a year of battery-grade lithium carbonate over a 46-year mine life, which is enough to produce 1 million EVs per year.

💪🏼 Copper Junior Hits High-grade Copper. At Surface.

Let’s just take a moment and appreciate Faraday Copper (TSX:FDY) for reporting the highest grade section first, then the larger, lower grade portion of the assays which this lies within, so that we maintain the focus and it doesn’t look like grade smearing. Well done, Faraday Team.

Highlights:

33.77m at 3.43% copper and 2.53g/t silver from 38.10 m at the Copper Knight breccia.

within

65.20 m at 1.88% copper and 1.56 g/t silver from 38.10m

Faraday used to be Copperbank, which, if memory serves us well, was more of a bank of many copper projects with varying quality.

They have since then pivoted into focusing on this Arizona flagship asset. It looks like the market likes it since on an otherwise red day across the board, the stock finished up 8+%.

Meme of The Day

Investment advice: Don't look at your trading account today.

The Editor

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.