TM editors’ note: This article discusses a penny stock and/or microcap. Such stocks are easily manipulated; do your own careful due diligence.

There’s a new metal in town, and it’s bigger than lithium—and hotter than any other commodity on the market right now.

Supply is fantastically tight and set to get phenomenally tighter.

Analysts at Macquarie Research project deficits of 885 tonnes of this resource next year, 3,205 in 2019 and 5,340 in 2020.

That’s a deficit increase of 503 percent. More importantly, it’s a massive opportunity for first-in investors.

The panic over future supply has already broken out.

The metal is cobalt, and hedge funds are already hoarding the physical metal to gain exposure, with Swiss-based Pala Investments and China’s Shanghai Chaos stockpiling 17 percent of last year’s global production.

Cobalt is critical to the electric vehicle (EV) revolution, and it makes up some 35 percent of the lithium-ion battery mix—but we can’t source enough of it now, and the future supply is uncertain at best.

A huge uptick in EV production and a dozen battery gigafactories coming on line will more than strain cobalt supplies. But the bottlenecks are already worrisome; especially since some 60 percent of the world’s supply is unethical, and mined by children under inhuman conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

It’s time for an all-American source of cobalt, and Scientific Metals (TSX:STM.V; OTC:SCTFF) is stepping up to the plate with a pure play cobalt project that could put the U.S. on the cobalt map for the first time in history. It would be the 5^th home run for Scientific Metals CEO Wayne Tisdale and his team, whose last home run was lithium. The panic over future lithium supply to feed the EV boom drove prices of lithium up over 400 percent.

Tesla’s bigger problem is now shaping up to be cobalt. And Tisdale’s next big bet is cobalt. It’s a good one because this metal is set for a demand explosion that could blow lithium away.  

Here are 5 reasons to keep a close eye on Scientific Metals (TSX:STM.V; OTC:SCTFF):
 

#1 The Cobalt Shortage Starts…Now
 

Lithium has been getting all the attention, but cobalt is just as important. By weight, lithium-ion batteries use more cobalt than lithium. We’ve already seen the lithium craze, and now it’s cobalt’s turn, and the supply and demand situation is a new producer’s dream.

Not only are we looking at a shortage already in 2017, but we’re looking at 20 percent demand growth every year. Simply put, EV makers are dependent on value chains that simply might not exist if we don’t get to new supply, fast.