This week a pitch from Matt Badiali got me to thinking — it came in as a free article with a little “cross-selling” pitch from another Stansberry publication, Retirement Millionaire, and it sounded a little bit familiar… so I thought we’d start with that today and see where it takes us.

The intro from David Eifrig, who runs Retirement Millionaire, includes this :

“The Third-Most Important Base Metal Is About to Rally

“Doc’s Note: Today I’m sharing an essay from my friend and colleague Matt Badiali….

“Right now, Matt sees an excellent opportunity in an often-overlooked metal. It’s a great way to add this commodity to your portfolio and gain some exposure to the natural resource sector.”

So that seems interesting, right? What is this “often-overlooked metal?”

It’s zinc, which has gone up much more in price than any other metal this year (yes, even more than gold at its peak mid-year), so it’s not necessarily “overlooked” by metals investors… the stories about zinc’s rise and the future demand from emerging markets even hit the Wall Street Journal this week… but it certainly gets a lot less press than copper or gold or even iron ore.

And what is it that Badiali is suggesting as he hints at a play on zinc’s surge? Some sort of company that is recommended by his Stansberry Research Resource Report… and in case you don’t feel like coughing up $99 to subscribe to that letter, we get some clues here:

“There’s an opportunity in zinc building toward a new bull market. That’s why this company is now planning to roll out a new zinc exploration venture at precisely the right time… when prices are starting to rebound… but everyone else is still despondent. Almost no one else is bothering to look for zinc.

“Depending on this company’s final plan, it could own around 25% of this new zinc venture. If the market soars, its new zinc assets could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. That would put significant profits into this company’s pockets….

“This recommendation has a proven track record of exploiting previous resource cycles as well. It has a history of hoarding assets when they’re cheap and profiting from the inevitable rebound… Its interest in zinc is just the latest example.”

That sounds like someone we know, right? That’s a pretty apt description of Brian Dalton and the folks at ...