Blind Item #10 - Metal, Misery & War - Part 2 - Mr. Hedge

You can read Part 1 here. 

One grand master plan has been in process for some time, in order to profit mightily from the now semi-precious metal I described in Part 1.  Its brilliance is only eclipsed by its downright evil.

Several years ago, a group led by a certain Eastern Bloc billionaire was formed.  Our billionaire no longer lives in his country of birth.  He strives to stay out of the press as much as possible, but he can be found.

Our billionaire and a couple of his friends pooled a couple billion dollars of their collective net worth, in the form of their own private investment fund. The fund’s main holdings consisted of buying up relatively large amounts of this metal over time. 

This metal would have been a good investment anyway, to be sure.  The price would have risen steadily over the years, due to the industrial / technology demand described in Part 1.

The limited industrial nature of this market made it ripe for a long-term, sizable squeeze.  It isn’t like gold, silver, platinum – which are pretty liquid.

The group stealthily entered into many forward purchase contracts, which had the effect of taking a couple hundred million dollars of this metal off the market per year, spread out into the future.  The metal is held in a few different storage facilities.

This was just enough to create a real supply squeeze, causing the price to really skyrocket over a few years.

The rise in the price of this metal causes the “target value” of this impoverished and historically unstable country’s government to increase as well.  Notice the recent increase in rebel activity in this country.

At present, the fighting is only in the early innings of the game, so to speak. In other words, the fighting has not yet meaningfully affected the supply of this metal. 

This country is the sole source for over half the world's supply of this metal.  When the fighting reaches its apex, and much of the country is engulfed in revolution - this will temporarily cause the price of this metal to reach astronomical heights.  That is when this group will dump their entire holdings of this metal to satisfy the world market, at record prices.

The rebels get money to buy arms and finance their operations from outside industrial interests, who want to control supply of this metal more favorably, with a change in government.
The really sick part?  Our billionaire’s investment group also holds interests in a very large armaments manufacturer in the billionaire’s home country, which supplies these sorts of groups in third world countries, as well as some governments.  So they make money on both sides of the trade, as it were.