Anthony Milewski on Commodities, Sustainability, and Investing Intuition

world's going to need more of, so if you think about right now, you have a few themes like that, one of them is artificial intelligence and the consumption of power and things like uranium are really interesting, another aspect of modernization, of course, is the need to reimagine the power grid in America and not just America but the world and so that takes a lot of copper. I'm going to play a little bit of it and then I'm going to play the rest of the song, so I'll see you in a little bit.

Welcome to Super Entrepreneur's Podcast. I'm your host, Shahid Durrani.Today we have with us Anthony Milewski.

Anthony has two passions, the outdoor and investing. At any moment, you might find him skiing in the deep Canadian powder, fly fishing in Alaska, white water rafting in Oregon, or wide awake in the middle of the night, analyzing news releases and financials. Awesome. Anthony, thank you so much for coming on our show. Thank you for having me. My pleasure. You've been in the commodities market for some time. Has it changed over the years?

And were there any key moments that really helped you shape your approach to investing?

Yeah, look for anyone watching or listening, look around the room that you're in right now and everything that you see is either grown or mined. And so commodities are this sort of basic fundamental element of everything that we do and of every aspect of a modern life. And so you want to drive a car, you have copper, you have oil, maybe it's electric, you have nickel, cobalt, lithium. And so it's this very basic element of every aspect of our life that almost no one knows anything about.

And certainly most people don't understand where it comes from. And whenever you're thinking about investing and you have a new technology, think about artificial intelligence you think about technology, but actually AI and consumes a huge amount of power. Which ultimately comes from uranium or coal. And so I think, the most interesting aspect about commodities is it's this critical aspect of everything that we do that no one knows anything about but at the same time, everyone has experienced.

And so knows a lot about too.

How did you get involved in this? What excited you to get involved with commodities? Yeah, when I started off my first job, I was going to work in London. And at the time there was a huge bull market in in Russia going on and all these, it was sort of Soviet Union had ended and all these companies had been developing and they were listing on the London stock exchange.

And so I ended up working in Moscow helping Russian companies to list in London and the nature of the Russian economy, it's been a long time ago, was commodities. And so we were primarily working on utilities and coal companies and oil and gas companies. And so it was that experience that really got me interested in commodity markets, how they function and how they really impact our lives.

So do you own physical commodities as well? I have I've owned physical commodities like cobalt. I have also owned commodities like carbon credits, which are not physical at all. At different times I've founded a company. For instance, cobalt 27, we were one of the largest owners of physical cobalt in the world after the, maybe the second largest Chinese government. And our approach to investing has always been to think about the changes underway.

Think about what's happening in the world and how those changes are going to consume more commodities and what it is exactly that that the world's going to need more of. So if you think about right now, you have a few themes like that. One of them is artificial intelligence and the consumption of power. And things like uranium are really interesting. Another aspect. Of modernization, of course, is the need to reimagine the power grid in America and not just America, but the world.

And so that takes a lot of copper. And you have to start with an idea about how you think the world is going to look in the future. And then from there, ask yourself what exactly those changes are going to do, or how they're going to impact global commodity markets.

Another one is sustainability, that's something that is gathering a lot of attention. How do you see the role of commodities? For example, like nickel, for example, how would that affect? It's a great question. And I think it largely depends on if people and consumers care about sustainability and what I mean by that is.

Today, if you take nickel as an example, the majority of nickel, maybe even 70 percent of nickel comes out of Indonesia from mining practices that are largely pretty toxic and environmentally damaging. And yet that nickel probably ends up in your Tesla or your iPhone or whatever that device is. And that's not really sustainable. So the question becomes as a consumer, that's a good point. Are you prepared to pay for that sustainability?

And one of the answers to that is of course pricing of commodities for sustainability. And so you would have a nickel unit one price one way, and then you would have nickel unit to price the sustainable from a more sustainable mind. And today, frankly, consumers have not been prepared to pay for that. So as much as people want to talk about sustainability. Consumers haven't been willing to pay for it.

And ultimately the only way for sustainability in the majority of this commodity is going to be the end consumer being willing to pay for that sustainability because to build. That type of mine likely means it's going to cost a lot more money. And so that commodity produced there is going to cost more money and instead people want to buy the most inexpensive unit And that's what's happening. And so until that change happens, it's going to be pretty challenging.

Yeah I see And I hear about Gen Z, they're going to come out and they're very serious about sustainability. So maybe they make some changes. The change is really their pocketbook is are people going to be prepared to pay for that change? And I think we don't know yet the answer to that, but that's really how the change will happen. Yeah, it has to begin at that level of the mind, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's a big one.

So when it comes to making money and being Responsible Environmentally speaking if they're you know, there are some Obviously, they're very serious about this any tips for them You know, it's really hard. It's a really big challenge because think of it this way. You want to be more sustainable as a human. So you say, I'm going to drive an electric vehicle and that kind of, that seems like a good thing. You're not, it's not powered by gas.

But then you say there's a battery in there, which has lithium, nickel and cobalt, among other things, there's tin and copper. And, maybe that cobalt comes out of a mine in the democratic Republic of Congo, the DRC, and maybe possibly some of that cobalt was produced by child labor. And so how do you do it? And I don't know that there's an answer yet, actually, I think on the one hand, an individual could be trying to do the right thing. They could be.

In this case, buying electric vehicle Baby steps but ultimately it's challenging. And I think that's maybe the message is that there's probably not really a way to be fully sustainable through buying these basic materials, but maybe it's really about, raising awareness. Helping people to understand, grow, and then over time change. But I think today there's probably not actually a way to do it.

So was there any mindset shifts that you experienced, working in this changing environment of commodities?

I think the biggest one is just realizing each one of us is really disconnected from the supply chain and we're, we just have our phone show up for us. Or our car or our hamburger or our salad or whatever. It just shows up in its finalized form. And most people go through the laws and they don't think about, they don't think about that.

And I think one of the things about investing in commodities and basic materials is you start to really understand how these things start off their life as potentially just a big. Rock that you pour acid on the acid melts away, and, or, as an animal living in a field that's eating, and we are completely disconnected from that.

And so for me, the mind shift is really becoming aware of that and understanding that, and then seeing opportunity in that as you go through your daily life and think about things. And that's potentially how you start to think about it as an investment or investing in the asset class is really to start to deconstruct all these things you touch because Every single thing you touch in your daily life most likely started off as a commodity, as a base of material.

That's even ourselves, our bodies, that the elements that make us up were probably made in ancient stars, millions of light years away, millions of years ago. And so we're all commodities in the end, right? Just reorganized. Yeah. Like this, they did a test on human beings and they found, I believe it's 82 or 75 to 80 percent star dust, our body. So it's an interesting way to think about it, and I think, we have that mind shift, mindset shift and start to actually consider it.

It opens up a lot of opportunities to think about investing and think about interesting ideas that you maybe have never considered before. Yeah.

So speaking of that being innovative and having that mindset to see beyond what we see on the surface. What are your thoughts on utilizing your intuition, because, experts like Warren Buffett has mentioned in the past that, majority of his wins are because of his intuition, how he focuses and tunes into it. Have you experienced that? Or do you utilize it? Yeah, I think he's right.

I think I think if you go back in time and you got into an early Tesla and you really liked that car and you thought, wow, I like the screen and this is really cool your intuition is telling you like, this is a great product and maybe you should think about investing in it. So I think that your personal experience. Does give you a certain intuition about products or, you're at school, you're taking your kids to school and all the kids have X, whatever X is, everyone's wearing a Nike shoes.

That's not really the right example, but, I do think that, um, going through life for these observations and intuitions about products and ideas that all of us have that could help us if we decided to invest. And I think it's a great way to think about investing people. Yeah, it is. It very much is.

And examples that you shared, I feel that it may be more towards the influence of other people on our decisions more gearing towards a deep A deeper research into one's intuition, like going deep within to, to find new ideas, concepts, or strategies that you may need in your investment journey, as a lot of the technologies that we experienced today.

Wi Fi, for example, or these waves that were here that we're utilizing now were here thousands of years ago, they're always here, it's just our awareness, our intuition allowed us to discover it and utilize it. Same way, there's so much out there that, we may not be able to pick up solely on our intellect. We might just need to go deeper, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, I think that's true and having time to think about these things is helpful.

And it can give you a personal insight into some idea that other people don't have. Yeah.

So can you share a story with some type of, , risk that you took a big risk in your investment that really paid off? I'm curious. Yeah, no, like one example was I was a managing director at a private equity firm and, uh, started to read about this. It's been a number of years ago. I started to read about electric vehicles and. And maybe 10 years ago and man, this is really interesting.

And, it started to become interested in what that could look like if everyone bought electric vehicles but, starting a car company, it's it wasn't possible. It didn't really make sense. And it wasn't something I understood. And so I started to think about what what could this look like? What, what, how could I invest in this idea? What could I do? And so I ended up leaving the private equity firm and.

Taking a company public that I founded to focus on the basic materials that made up the batteries in electric vehicles. So we ended up raising over a billion dollars and we sold the company. And, the risk of course was quitting a job that, that paid well and was a great job and really taking a chance on this idea that people were going to buy electric vehicles and they were going to need cobalt and nickel and these basic materials.

Power the electric vehicle and it was really like taking a risk, leaving a job and following this idea and intuition, as you say, that I had about where the market was going and it was a big risk and it worked. Loved it. That's awesome, Anthony. Thank you for sharing that.

Are there any new markets or anything that you can share to, to us about investing that may be coming up or that we need to keep an eye on? Yeah, look, I think I think that if you, there are a few interesting things happening one, of course, is AI and these data centers and the power that it consumes. And so that's going to impact energy, which means you have impact on natural gas pricing.

You're already seeing large corporations start to price that it's going to have an impact on potential uranium and coal. So just thinking about how AI could transform energy markets. It's really interesting and then I think the transition, excuse me, the transmission of that power is also interesting. And copper, we're going to have to remake the power grid and most of the world. If we're going to have everyone driving electric vehicles. And so that's also really interesting.

And so these themes, it's thematic investing. I want to really impact. Commodities markets. And I think it's worth considering that and thinking about it. Very good point.

I find AI very much very interesting and what it's going to do in many different areas, even for investing too, I could see it playing a huge part in looking at the history analyzing the trends to give recommendations, I think. There already are platforms that are utilizing this. Is that correct? Yeah, no, there are. And it's also a little bit scary, right?

Because the power of it, the ability to take all this data and analyze it and, uh, really come up with outcomes that And ideas that we don't even really necessarily, or have the ability to understand how it arrived at that. And so I do think it's going to probably change almost every aspect of our life. Think about every device you have, every app, all these things are collecting data on you. And actually, already, these.

Apps and phones know more about you than you know about you because they're able to follow your patterns. And if you extrapolate that across all the tens and hundreds of millions of people that own an iPhone and then Apple has your data, you know that humans are like creatures of habit. And so it's able to take your data and cross it across everyone else's data, pathetically.

And it will know stuff about you, and it will probably be able to influence what you buy, and how you buy it, and when you buy it. It, it'll influence if it's a dating app, who you're dating, potentially, and, it can influence every single aspect of our lives. Because it has so much data exists, pardon me, and it's able to analyze that data, and then gain insight in a way that no individual human could do it, because we don't have the ability to process that much data.

No, that's so true and then, obviously, like you mentioned earlier, lithium is going to be a big player in the future because we're going to need a lot of power. Lithium is a critical element in electric vehicle batteries. And in so much as people continue to buy and want to transition to electric vehicles, lithium Those batteries are comprised of, among other things, lithium, and so lithium is really important for those batteries. Yeah.

I want to thank you so much for taking the time to come on our show and speak about all this. I'm sure it added value and I appreciate your time, once the episode goes live, will send you an email, all the information. And if there's anything else you're launching or anything in the future, you can always, you're welcome to come back on the show as well.