We haven't done anything with lithium in ages, when making the decision on battery metals in the spring of 2016 we went with cobalt rather than lithium:Morgan Stanley forecasts 30 per cent drop in lithium prices by 2025 https://t.co/NBCC7KyWjA via @financialtimes— Neil Hume (@humenm) July 12, 2019
Why the CIA Reads The Financial Times (and you should too) Tesla and Cobalt
May 26, 2016
A couple weeks ago we posted a seemingly innocuous piece with a boring headline: "'Freeport Sinks On Sale of Africa Copper Mine To Chinese' (FCX; LUN.TO)".
I figured there were at best two thousand people in the whole world who knew or cared about the back story and real import of what was going on so I'd just drop it as an Easter egg for the cognoscenti and other assorted electric vehicle/conflict mineral/African warlord/Elon Musk/extractive industry/Génocidaire hunter/U.S. political corruption watchers to find.
Well now that cat's out of the bag.
Big kudos to the FT's Henry Sanderson for recognizing one hell of a story and a small request for the Financial Times: Can you tell us what the old ENRC is up to these days?
From The Financial Times, May 25:
China plays long game on cobalt and electric batteries...
LME
It was a good decision. and pretty good timing.
And as tends to happen the price increase brought out new supply on the one hand and substitution effects by end users on the other.
Always, Always, Always remember:
One of the first persons we quoted on the expected real return from commodities was Dylan Grice, then at Société Générale:Anyhoo, there are no futures in lithium, although the LME has been threatening to roll some out since 2017, so if MS is right the investment vehicles available are boiler room Contracts-for-Difference (Yikes!!) or the miners. The two biggest are Albemarle and Sociedad Quimica Y Minera de Chile:
Société Générale's Dylan Grice-"Commodities: ‘Their Expected Long-Run Real Return is 0%’"
January 2018
Lithium: Here Comes the Supply Surge
And a couple weeks later:
Lithium: After Four Years of Negotiating, SQM and Regulator Reach Agreement On Increased Production (SQM; ALB)
The two stocks haven't done so well since those January 2018 posts:
