Just a short note to mark my purchase of some more SLDP. 

SLDP is part of a trend I expect to do well, solid batteries. Scroll through enough videos of fires from lithium ion batteries and see a need for something safer. Read enough headlines about the difficulty in sourcing lithium and see a benefit from using other materials. Check the research and notice the benefits in operational things like charge times and see a draw to switch from lithium ion batteries to something better.

I don’t know that SLDP will be a winner, investing entails the risk of loss, but welcome to the world of investing in innovative companies.

Battery technology may seem static but it hasn’t been. Like any other technology, someone is usually trying to come up with something better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_battery

I won’t bore you with the detailed history, but a casual glance shows that those early batteries would not fit inside your cell phone.

I am old enough that I remember when batteries were just called batteries. Then came alkalines. Then there were things like Ni-cads, but I didn’t worry about them. I just wanted my AAs and AAAs. I knew about lithium ion, and started to pay attention when cars were built around them. For me, it is natural to wonder what’s next.

More range. Smaller packages. Quicker recharges. Safer. Lighter. Cheaper. They’re all good. I read claims about all of it, but know that the market simply needs something better in some way, anyway, to generate a new product.

The firms have advanced from talking about lab work to prototypes to test articles with hints of production runs within a ‘few’ years. Cool. Fine. Good. I’m patient. I buy now.

I also buy now because I’d rather be too early than too late. I also buy now because I recently sold some QBTS. That is largely for spending money, but I tend to take such opportunities to reinvest. SLDP is down, more than half of where I bought it last year. I could buttress that position up to my personal version of a share limit for what may be cheap. 

After I realized that SLDP was cheaper and that the company was making progress I started paying more attention. I noticed my reaction that I was paying more attention than normal. For me, that much attention can be a waste of time if nothing is done, and it can be a sign that part of me intuitively feels (not an investment term) that I should do something.

So I bought. I bought a bit. I also am comfortable with the purchase because purchasing a stock is not a lifetime commitment. I rarely sell, but I just sold some QBTS, so there’s proof that I treat the stocks as assets, something fluid and liquid, and those are interesting terms when describing something solid.

It isn’t hard to imagine batteries progressing to the point that they are more like a lifetime purchase. Smoke detectors now come with long-life batteries. It has begun. Appliances now come with embedded batteries, partly to boost the power of electric kitchen appliances, but also as a backup in a storm. Cool. Go a bit further and off-grid applications become even easier. Cars and planes may never get there, but a 600 mile battery that charges in thirty minutes would be a game changer for someone.

I hope I can afford them.

In the meantime, I bought some SLDP for less than $2.50. Now, I sit and watch and wait, and more importantly, get on with the rest of my life.