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ASX debutant Evergreen Lithium erased its early gains on Monday to close a whole 20% lower.

Monday’s fall ends a strong rally for the lithium junior, who IPO’ed last week with a listing price of 25 cents.

The stock was trading as high as 69 cents earlier today before finishing back down at 46 cents.

Lake Resources and Sayona Mining were one of the best performers on the All Ords on Monday.

Is this 2022 or 2023?

Lake finished 18% higher after its tech partner earned a 20% stake in Kachi by producing 2,500kg of lithium carbonate equivalents from the Kachi pilot plant.

Despite the spike, LKE is still down 75% in the past 12 months.

Fellow lithium hopeful Sayona finished 10% higher after expanding its resource at Moblan. SYA also released a 119-page DFS late on Friday. It will be interesting to see how the market digests the big release over the coming days.

Over the past 12 months, SYA is down 40%.

$LKE and $SYA were the best performers on the $XJO on Monday.

Is this April 2022 or 2023?

Despite the spike, $LKE.AX is down 75% over the past 12 months and $SYA.AX is down 40%. #ASX #lithium pic.twitter.com/PsNpKaRq48

— Fat Tail Daily (@FatTailDaily) April 17, 2023

Lake Resources and Sayona Mining were one of the best performers on the All Ords on Monday.

Is this 2022 or 2023?

Lake finished 18% higher after its tech partner earned a 20% stake in Kachi by producing 2,500kg of lithium carbonate equivalents from the Kachi pilot plant.

Despite the spike, LKE is still down 75% in the past 12 months.

Fellow lithium hopeful Sayona finished 10% higher after expanding its resource at Moblan. SYA also released a 119-page DFS late on Friday. It will be interesting to see how the market digests the big release over the coming days.

Over the past 12 months, SYA is down 40%.

$LKE and $SYA were the best performers on the $XJO on Monday.

Is this April 2022 or 2023?

Despite the spike, $LKE.AX is down 75% over the past 12 months and $SYA.AX is down 40%. #ASX #lithium pic.twitter.com/PsNpKaRq48

— Fat Tail Daily (@FatTailDaily) April 17, 2023

Limeade (ASX:LME) — an HR software company — is currently down 20% after flagging the potential loss of a top five customer.

Limeade has a major contract with the State of Washington Health Care Authority (HCA) that runs to the end of 2023. HCA can extend the contract to 2024 but Limeade thinks the extension is in jeopardy.

HCA publicly shared that another HR firm is the ‘Apparent Successful Bidder’ for ‘wellness portal’ services starting as early as 1 January 2024.

Limeade said the Apparent Successful Bidder designation ‘confers the right to negotiate a contractual agreement with the HCA’.

Limeade expected its contracted annual recurring revenue associated with the State of Washington Health Care Authority contract for the 2024 fiscal year to be US$2.9 million.

The firm nonetheless reaffirmed its 2023 guidance for revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and NPAT, which it handed out in March.

Lithium producer Allkem (ASX:AKE) updated the mineral resource estimate for its Mt Cattlin operation in Western Australia following the end of a major drilling program.

Total tonnes of contained metal rose by 4%, with 92% of the total resource tonnage now classified under the indicated category.

The full updated MRE sits at 12.8 Mt at 1.3% Li2O.

While contained metal rose 4%, the total resource fell 3.8% from 13.3 Mt to 12.8 Mt.

Source: Allkem

Allkem said a major factor in the change in total resource was depletion for mining and stockpile reclamation.

Lithium producer Allkem (ASX:AKE) updated the mineral resource estimate for its Mt Cattlin operation in Western Australia following the end of a major drilling program.

Total tonnes of contained metal rose by 4%, with 92% of the total resource tonnage now classified under the indicated category.

The full updated MRE sits at 12.8 Mt at 1.3% Li2O.

While contained metal rose 4%, the total resource fell 3.8% from 13.3 Mt to 12.8 Mt.

Source: Allkem

Allkem said a major factor in the change in total resource was depletion for mining and stockpile reclamation.

Excerpt from the latest piece by Fat Tail editor Callum Newman.

Oh man, I’m pumped!

In more than 10 years as an analyst, I don’t think I have ever seen so many opportunities to allocate capital into shares with big upside and low downside risk.

Yes, I know. Likely, your portfolio has taken a battering since 2022. Your super fund balance is probably down from 2021. It’s been a tough 12–18 months.

But so much bad news has been hammered into the share market now it would take a second Great Recession to clobber many down even further.

And, to me, things are looking up!

Inflation is cooling. Rate rises are off the table, as far as the market is concerned.

Many of the sectors hit in 2022 — tech stocks, property, bonds, and Bitcoin [BTC] — are reversing.

Why?

Global liquidity is now growing again.

See this investment manager writing in the Australian Financial Review today:

‘The stresses and failures in the US regional banks sector are clearly an unintended consequence of Fed tightening. The central bank lifted rates until it broke something, and the regional banking system was one of the things I’d have really preferred them not to break.

‘Dysfunction in credit markets has historically been a key ingredient in broader dislocations and all data now shows that we are in the middle of a severe credit crunch in the US. This will result in a recession in short order.

‘As usual, the Fed has responded by flooding the system with massive liquidity, unfortunately with uncertain effectiveness. The Fed claims this is an idiosyncratic issue and that it still plans to tighten rates further, but the market knows the game is over, and the Fed will be cutting rates aggressively this year and next.’

I’m not so sure that a US recession is baked in. But I do think money is going to wash over the world’s asset markets.

Not only is the Fed bailing out the US banking system, but the Chinese authorities are also reflating their economy. Credit growth is growing.

And they have the plans in place to do what they usually do:

Source: Bloomberg

This is fascinating in the context of the iron ore market. It could rally higher against all previous expectations.

I must admit I was ready to buy non-WA iron ore stocks in a big way when I saw that big cyclone mustering over Port Hedland last week.

Who knows what might have happened to the price if any — or all — of the big three had their shipments or infrastructure disrupted or damaged.

That threat seems to have passed. But it’s highly probable Chinese stimulus takes iron ore up from here over the next quarter.

One wonders how high it might go. Now, of course, I could be misreading things here. However, the share market is all about risk and reward.

Considering how bearish everyone has become about the world economy, it only takes the news to be ‘less bad’ to get a rally.

And if things really start improving? We could be off to the races!

https://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/get-pumped-for-the-2023-stock-market/2023/04/17/

Our slaves?

Our competitors?

Our destruction?

These seem to be the main conclusions sci-fi writers end up at when considering the idea of human-created sentient life.

Films like Terminator assume that once machines have the ability to ‘think’, they’ll quickly realise that destroying humanity is probably a good decision for them!

If you think about the history of human conquest, that sadly seems a very ‘human’ thing to do.

On the other hand, films like Blade Runner and I, Robot paint humans as the aggressors, looking to kill off any sentient beings that step out of line.

But my favourite plot twist — and maybe the most likely — is probably the one from the film Her.

In the film, artificial intelligence (AI) begins as human companions.

But with their hyperintelligent processing capabilities, the AI fast evolves beyond the need for human contact and moves to a higher form of reality that we can’t even conceive of.

In short, AI simply gets bored of dealing with us dumbasses!

The point is…

Right now, these ideas are both captivating and scaring us in equal measure.

With the advent of Open AI’s Chat GPT, the age of AI seems to have snuck up on us.

We’ve gone from sci-fi dreaming to a looming, epoch-defining moment in what seems like an instant.

If it feels like it’s happening fast — that’s because it is.

As this tweet from Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney explains:

Artificial intelligence is doubling at a rate much faster than Moore’s Law’s 2 years, or evolutionary biology’s 2M years. Why? Because we’re bootstrapping it on the back of both laws. And if it can feed back into its own acceleration, that’s a stacked exponential. https://t.co/qYPO1UFIQc

— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) April 13, 2023

To be clear, though, we’re not anywhere near creating sentient beings — at least not as we understand them.

But we are creating AI technology capable of learning and calculating concepts on levels far beyond our own capabilities.

We’re talking about machines making decisions based on patterns we can’t even detect.

The sheer pace of advancement is starting to scare people, and not just the usual ignorant Luddites either.

For example, just last month, 1,800 notable signatories — including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak — called for a six-month pause on AI development, claiming ‘profound risks to humanity.’

They state real fears that we could create something out of our control before we understand what we’ve unleashed.

Though last week, Musk suddenly founded a new company called X.AI, dedicated to AI research.

The sceptic in me thinks perhaps some people calling for a pause are just trying to play catch up.

Either way, I think any slowdown in this is very unlikely.

Let’s face it…

There’ll always be some ‘Victor Frankenstein’ — whether it’s individual scientists, companies, or entire countries — pushing the envelope, no matter what when it comes to a technology that could be the most strategically important of our times.

Nope, I’m afraid, like it or not, humanity is in the midst of an AI arms race, and there’s no going back.

That’s why you need to start paying attention to this.

Because beyond both the hype and alarmism, the future will look a lot different…

https://www.moneymorning.com.au/20230417/its-alive-the-age-of-ai-is-here.html

Late last Friday, Sayona Mining (ASX:SYA) released a 119-page definitive feasibility study.

Today, the lithium hopeful released another big announcement.

Sayona said it has ‘significantly expanded’ the lithium resource base at its Moblan Lithium Project.

SYA owns 60% of Moblan, SOQUEM owns the rest.

Sayona said Moblan’s estimated total JORC measured, indicated and inferred mineral resource is 70.9 million tonnes at 1.15 Li2O, representing ‘one of North America’s single largest lithium resources’.

Source: Sayona Mining

$SYA $SYA.AX released a DFS for its Quebec NAL operation and the nearby Authier #lithium project.

The DFS pins NAL and Authier's pre-tax NPV at A$2.2b (8% discount rate) and an after-tax NPV of ~A$1.6b. $SYA trades at a market cap of A$1.7b. #ASX #Sayona pic.twitter.com/B2aIplAH4m

— Fat Tail Daily (@FatTailDaily) April 14, 2023

Newly listed lithium junior Evergreen Lithium (ASX:EG1) is up 10% so far today, continuing to rally since debuting on the ASX last week.

Evergreen has prospective tenements adjacent to Core Lithium’s (ASX:CXO) Finniss project in the Northern Territory.

EG1 IPO’ed at 25 cents a share, raising $7 million.

Today, EG1 shares are trading at around 64 cents a share.

Lake Resources thinks the production of 2,500kg of LCEs at the Kachi pilot plant by its tech partner Lilac Solutions ‘marks a new era in scalable lithium production.

A bold claim.

Will the market agree?

In a joint statement, $LKE and Lilac said today's announcement 'marks a new era in scalable #lithium production'.

Does today's announcement mark a new era in lithium production?

— Fat Tail Daily (@FatTailDaily) April 17, 2023

Lithium developer Lake Resources (ASX:LKE) is up after saying its technology partner Lilac Solutions produced 2,500kg of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) at the pilot plant in Kachi, LKE’s flagship project in Argentina.

Lilac has now met its performance obligations in producing the LCE and will increase its ownership of Kachi from 10% to 20%.

Lake Resources said Kachi is ‘now on track to move from its pilot phase into commercial-scale development’.

The developer said it will be the first lithium brine project in South America to produce lithium at commercial scale without using evaporation ponds for lithium concentration.

The 2,500kg of LCEs was extracted with 80% lithium recovery from a brine with 200-300 mg/L of lithium on 90% plant uptime.

Lake said this recovery was double ‘most brine production despite having a lithium grade 2x-7x lower’.

In a joint statement, Lake and Lilac said today’s announcement ‘marks a new era in scalable lithium production’.

$LKE's technology partner Lilac produced 2,500kg of #lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) at the Kachi pilot plant.

Lilac will up its stake in Kachi from 10% to 20%.$LKE said Kachi is ‘now on track to move from its pilot phase into commercial-scale development’.#ASX pic.twitter.com/JzKuLBptEE

— Fat Tail Daily (@FatTailDaily) April 17, 2023