I’m reminded of the old tripe: "LM is five years away from breakout wide scale adoption, and it always will be."
I’ve been in since 2010. I made a little money selling at 0.42, but bought back later and have been underwater for years.
As Joshua wrote, I can easily imagine LM being perfect for ultra thin future electronics that must be flexible and, strong, and light. But every time I turn around some new but traditional alloy has been used in these cases. Except perhaps for phone hinges. But even there not all manufacturers are using LM for those hinges. So someone has figured how to make them without.
Also with the 5G promise. From this board you’d think 5G necessitated LM. Yet it’s being rolled out worldwide while our stock price wouldn’t buy a pack of chewing gum. 5G is moving on without us.
Biomedical has lots of implants on the market. How many require LM? By my count zero. Why would they suddenly rush to this material. Granny is just fine with her knee replacement as it is. No LM required. Bob’s pacemaker is working just fine without LM. Suzy’s bone screws are doing their job without our product.
So I’m concerned.
I think Steve Jobs found $20 million between his couch Cushions on day and decided LM was a steal, not least to block other companies from using it for competing products. He did this lots. They would buy companies and let them languish, just to lock out others. So that’s not a huge deal to me in retrospect.
What’s the other company someone mentioned? Please tell me it’s not Martin guitars. Great guitars, but bridge pins? Look, I bought premium “bone” bridge pins once for 20-50 bucks, can’t recall. I was sure my sound was so much better. Was it? Maybe. But like Dumbo’s feather if you believe you can fly, then it’s aslmost as important as flying. So that feels like a marketing thing, not a real life true benefit.
So what are we left with?
I’m not so sure. Seems like a product that is perfect for ultra miniaturized future robots.. Maybe. Then again, nature ended up with soft creatures with bones not nearly as rigid as metal. So future robots will probably have lots of aluminum and polycarbonate. Apple glasses will be AL, or SS, or Ti and be just fine. 5G iPhones are doing just fine with steel and glass.
And our stock price is massively inflated by hope, not least my own.
So yeah, I’m antsy. Soon I’m inclined to sell 60-80% and invest in actual companies making actual products with actual pipelines. How soon? I’ll give it 3 weeks. Some time between 1-6 months I think is all I can muster.
I appreciate your comments and encouragement. I guess I’m left thinking that maybe the train left the station and LM was never on board.
