Good morning, friends and fellow traders. As promised in Friday's newsletter, we've got a new trading idea for you today. This is what we'd call a "special situation" trade, as it takes some recognition of a couple of off-the-radar trends to fully appreciate it. There's your edge - most other traders simply aren't connecting the dots we're about to connect for you right now. The best way to set the stage for this look is with a quick, three-question quiz: What other element besides lithium is required to make the batteries that power electric vehicles? How much of the world's supply of this element is controlled by just one country? (Extra points for those who know how much the U.S. produces.) How many companies in North America are supplying this element with a soup-to-nuts solution? The answers... Cobalt (they're used to make the electrodes). The Democratic Republic of Congo mines 58% of the world's cobalt. There's no company in North America that does it all; there are few that do any of it. Oh, and for the extra credit... North America produces a paltry 1% of the world's cobalt. That's a huge problem, because the world's biggest manufacturer of electric vehicles -- Tesla Motors (TSLA) -- is located in North America, and is reportedly looking to get it cobalt solely from North American providers. In short, this is the year investors are being forced to digest the reality of the world's cobalt shortage. InvestorIntel put things in perspective earlier this year, explaining: "Overall, cobalt demand is projected to grow from 87,383 tonnes to 113,725 tonnes between 2014 and 2018. Cobalt supply is projected to grow from 91,577 tonnes to 100,778 tonnes over this same time frame. Rechargeable batteries and superalloys comprise 46% and 18% respectively of the total refined cobalt demand." In other words, there's not enough cobalt to go around. And clearly the problem is going to get worse before it gets better. Tesla Motors used up a huge chunk of the supply this year to make a little less than 100,000 electric vehicles. The company plans to be cranking out 500,000 automobiles per year by 2018. If supply is a problem now, just think what kind of problem it's going to be then. That's where CobalTech Mining, Inc. (BNCIF, CVE:CSK) comes into the picture. CobalTech Mining Inc. is an Ontario-based mining and exploration company focused on the development of cobalt assets in Canada. It recently - as in November 23rd - closed the acquisition of the 32.3 hectare Duncan Kerr Project and a 360 tpd (tonnes per day) mill located in the mining-friendly jurisdiction of (appropriately enough) Cobalt, Ontario. ... a historical cobalt camp in the region. The milling facility already has a gravity and flotation circuit in place, and its capacity could be expanded to 500 tpd with relative ease. What makes CobalTech Mining so interesting here is that unlike most mining companies, it doesn't have any mining to do. All the mining that needs to be done has already been done. CobalTech Mining just needs to process the material left behind by previous mining operations using its gravity and flotation circuits to separate the dirt and rocks from the cobalt (and silver) trapped within. The really cool part: The company has a crystal clear idea of how much cobalt is ready and waiting to be extracted, and a pretty clear idea of how much cobalt is ready to be extracted from an untested source. In the immediate future, CobalTech is eyeing three stockpiles they've simply labeled A, B and C. An independent mineral resource study prepared in 2014 by Golder Associates Ltd. estimated there were 6,588 dry metric tonnes of crushed material with an average grade of 761 g/t of silver, 0.08 g/t of gold, 0.33% nickel, 0.95% cobalt, and 5.92% arsenic in the three stockpiles. If my math is correct, that's about $3 million worth of silver and $1.8 million worth of cobalt, give or take. At a processing pace of 360 tonnes per day, BNCIF could be producing revenue on the order of $200,000 per day just from those three stockpiles, and be through it in fairly short order. That's not even the mother lode though - that's just the source Cobaltech has a near-term bead on. The proverbial big Kahuna is the 1.27 million dry tonnes of other mineralized material on the property to work through. If it's anything like stockpiles A, B and C, there's a LOT of money in there just waiting to be drawn out. We're talking tens of millions of dollars, if not more. Not bad for a $12 million company. With all of that being said, while CobalTech is a compelling prospect we like because it's so "shovel-ready," we're also fans because it's got so much flexibility - it's got more than one way to make money. One of those ways is simply by selling the bulk concentrate it gets from its flotation facilities and selling it directly to refiners. It can also further process its own concentrates through it gravitational separator, producing a higher-level concentrate material that is even more marketable. In the meantime, it could mill the other 1.27 million tonnes worth of material it's not yet tested, and process that as it best sees fit. It can do all of this because the company has the tools and know-how to become a fully-integrated cobalt company, able to do everything from processing its stockpiles to crushing and milling to smelting to refining to the marketing of the material it makes. If it ends up doing all of those things (and it likely will), it will be North America's first vertically-integrated cobalt processing company. It would be a welcome relief for the continent's cobalt buyers.... and yes, Tesla is a big one, and it hasn't even scratched the surface yet. The company aims to be making 500,000 electric vehicles per year by 2019, versus the less-than-100,000 it's going to make this year. That may not be easy without CobalTech doing its thing though. As was noted, the Democratic Republic of Congo supplies nearly 60% of the world's cobalt right now, while China alone refines about 43% of the world's cobalt. That just puts a big chunk of the United States' industrial future in someone else's hands. Cobaltech Mining's resource in Cobalt, Ontario is not only an opportunity, but also a necessity. As proof of that premise, check out the chart we showed you in Friday's newsletter. As you may have guessed by now, that chart was of cobalt prices. They're rising fast, from $10 per pound in early 2016 to $14 per pound now. And Tesla has yet to really turn up the heat. There's a price crunch coming; those companies that can supply it stand to make a fortune. That's CobalTech.... even more so in that it's aiming to become a vertically-integrated supplier, managing its own source. The usual cautions apply to BNCIF (or CSK, if you're in Canada). Those are, limit the size of your trade to an amount you can afford to lose, use an entry limit, and then use a stop-loss to protect yourself once you're in any trade. Also understand this is a small cap play, and as such is a bit speculative. You read the whole story about it and cobalt in general though. Not many people realize what's happening now, but once consumers and corporations figure out cobalt is getting real expensive real fast, it could really turn up the heat on this stock. Getting in then may be too late. Sooner is much better than later.