“Buy on the rumor. Sell on the news.” Once again, the old slogan has worked.
Lockheed announced a breakthrough in fusion power. It plans to have small reactors available in a decade. One will fit on the back of a truck.
In response to this announcement of a new energy order, Lockheed’s shares fell 0.6%.
What’s this? Private enterprise beat the U.S. government’s decades-long fusion research to the punch? Billions of federal dollars down the drain. And what about the 10 billion euros spent by the EU? Nothing to show for it, you say? Will wonders never cease?
If this pans out, then the #1 economic problem facing the world will be solved.
It will be bad news for OPEC. OPEC is a government-run cartel. This will bust its near-monopoly.
It will take decades to replace oil in cars. It always takes decades — as many as five — to replace old energy sources. But the stakes are high. The profits will be high. There is an incentive to shift.
Think of India and China with cheap energy and cheap telecommunications. Think of online education offered free to a billion Indians and a billion Chinese — all outside of the state-run government school systems. Think of the world taught by Salman Khan instead of public school teachers.
Let’s hope Lockheed has made a commercially viable breakthrough. Let’s hope that others will imitate Lockheed.
Next step: cheap, safe water. Desalination, here we come.
Decentralization, here we come.
