Real Asset Chartbook

Week #2: That was interesting

The second week of the Real Asset Chartbook and it has been an eventful one. Our custom equity indices tracking different parts of the liquid real asset universe are showing dramatic moves, yet it does not look like we have found a bottom yet. Probably more short-term pain to come, but everything in the real asset space was cheap before and has just gotten cheaper.

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This Weeks Essential Real Asset Reading

• Hot Chili Huasco Water PFS: We are interested in the economics of this project. Projects like this, infrastructure projects that make it possible to monetize difficult-to-reach natural resources, will become increasingly crucial as easy-to-monetize assets either reach the end of their life or greenfield investments become increasingly necessary to address global demand. Massif Capital is not invested in Hot Chili.

• The Clawback - Reclaiming Strategic Assets from China: The clawback trend reflects a broader geopolitical shift toward de-risking supply chains and reducing dependencies on China. While the US leads this effort with aggressive policies, partner countries are adopting similar measures. Beijing’s counter-strategies add complexity to the global investment landscape. At Massif Capital, we expect this dynamic to shape economic relations and corporate strategies for years to come.

• Empty Chinese Data Ceneters: We’ve spent some time in the last year tracking the buildout of data centers for the AI boom, as well as whether there will be any pullback on this buildout, due to things like DeepSeek (the Chinese AI model that reportedly required much less training computation). We have tracked it in the US out of interest in the potential impact on the US electricity grid, but have not followed the build out in China, it appears to be a mixed bag.

• Molecules of Freedom: Nothing earth shattering, but a good overview of the state of the LNG World.

Excerpt from our Latest Long-Form Research

We have been hard at work on a new deep dive report on Alphamin and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Just as we were getting ready to press the send button this week, we got word that US Special Adviser for Africa, Massad Bouloior, was meeting with Felix Tshisekedi in Kinshasa. We will be the first to admit that we had put the odds of a deal between the US and the DRC low on our list of likely outcomes, but it appears we may have been mistaken.

We are taking the weekend to digest this news and rework some analysis of this fluid situation. Look for a new long-form report on the DRC, Tin and Alphamin next week.