The Wildcat Resources Ltd (ASX: WC8) share price has been on an absolute tear this year.
How much of a tear?
We're talking about a 2,050% year to date return from this junior ASX lithium explorer.
And this astounding performance comes even as we've just seen the All Ordinaries Index (ASX: XAO) dip into the red for 2023.
To give you some idea of just how well the ASX lithium stock has performed, if I'd invested $1,000 at market close at the end of 2022, I'd now be sitting on $21,500.
If I'd been a bit more adventurous and risked investing $10,000 on the lithium explorer, that would have morphed into a potentially life-changing $215,000.
Boom!
Here's what's been spurring investor interest this year.
What's been boosting the Wildcat Resources share price?
Investors really began bidding up the Wildcat Resources share price in early May amid some wild enthusiasm over the company's lithium ambitions.
On 17 May, the company announced it was acquiring 100% of the Tabba Tabba lithium-tantalum project, located in Western Australia's Pilbara region.
The miner noted at the time that historical exploration had "defined a very high-grade, pegmatite-hosted tantalum deposit". However, there had been no prior focus on lithium exploration potential.
"This is a big step forward for the company to acquire such a highly prospective lithium exploration project that adds to our already large ground position in the world class Pilbara Lithium Province," executive director Matthew Banks said following the announcement.
He added that the miner's technical team "believes there is significant exploration upside at Tabba Tabba".
This has indeed proven to be the case.
The Wildcat Resources share price continued to climb over the months on a series of positive exploration results.
Recently, on 18 September, the miner reported on some very promising assay results from its maiden drilling campaign at Tabba Tabba.
As the Motley Fool reported on the day, those results from 21 drill holes confirmed that pegmatite bodies "contain significant widths and grades of lithium mineralisation".
Commenting on those assays, Wildcat Resources managing director Samuel Ekins said, "I'm confident we are in the early stages of a major discovery at Tabba Tabba and it's been a welcome surprise to see the size of the system."
The Wildcat Resources share price closed up 79.2% on the day.
Stay tuned.
