Most fund managers who say a commodity boom is just beginning are fully invested and hoping you'll agree. Ki-Un Park is unusual. His new fund holds roughly 70% cash, and he says that is exactly because he thinks the best part of the cycle is still ahead.
Who he is
Park leads Straits Invest, a Singapore firm founded in 2003 that manages money for wealthy families and institutions under a licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. In July it launched the Straits Invest Elementum Fund. In an interview with Streetwise Reports, Park said the fund had about 6.8 million in assets and was aiming for around 10 million by year end, mostly from existing clients, friends and family while it builds a track record.
How the fund is built
- Up to 80% can go into commodities and related investments: ETFs, listed miners and some unlisted companies, from precious and industrial metals to soft commodities.
- The rest can go elsewhere, with cybersecurity and AI named as examples.
- Gold and silver are the foundation, held through physically backed ETFs rather than futures. Park says he and his clients sleep better knowing there is metal behind them, without the cost of storing bars.
- About eight to ten positions so far, with most of the money still waiting.
We liked his definition of risk. He doesn't think of it as prices moving around. He thinks of it as the chance of losing everything. That is a useful way to size a position in anything speculative.
His argument
Park thinks critical minerals beyond the usual metals will become a bigger part of commodity portfolios. He uses antimony as the example: production is concentrated in very few countries, China's export restrictions have exposed how fragile supply is, and rebuilding capacity elsewhere takes years. That, he argues, makes for a long cycle rather than a quick spike.
On mining stocks, his point is about margins. If metal prices stay high and costs stay steady, established producers generate more free cash, which can pay down debt, fund growth or come back to shareholders. He thinks miners can do well even if metal prices stop rising, because the market hasn't fully priced in what today's prices already mean for their profits.
The small speculative bet
Park disclosed a small, early position in Krait Critical Minerals (CSE: KRIT), a Canadian explorer with antimony interests in Washington State and a gold project in Ontario. He called it a call option: a small amount that could be lost entirely, held for the chance of a large gain. He said a longtime friend introduced the company, he decided within a day or two, access to the CEO mattered, and the fund would probably take part in Krait's next financing.
Where we'd push back
A fund this new and this small has no track record yet, and sitting in 70% cash is easy to describe and hard to time. Personal relationships with company founders can help solve problems faster, as Park says, but they can also make it harder to walk away. And mining shares lag metal prices for real reasons, including rising costs and the habit of issuing new shares when prices are good. The thesis may be right. The proof will be in how and when that cash gets spent.
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