@@timothykeith1367 don't know, but that's exactly what the claims were. That we could not transition to EV's because there was not enough lithium to do it.🤔
Dead batteries too. The 2-6 screen in the EVs are tablets that send and receive signals and updates when the cars are off. And people are waking up to find out they need to charge their car 3 hours before work.
While there is a temporary glut in lithium stocks, the demand will increase. Lithium however is not a rare resource, the winners will be miners who can be the most efficient.
The death of ICE has been greatly exaggerated. Hertz the rental car company found that out the hard way. Green is the new red. Oil is still black gold.
They had a long term offtake agreement with Tesla when the price was high, with guaranteed offtakes, but turned it down in hope for a better offer. Unfortunate decision.
It's impossible to see the future. A couple years back, all the rage was to predict STRATOSPHERIC lithium prices in coming years. In a similar way, crude oil prices are HIGHLY volatile and EXTREMELY difficult to predict accurately over time. Or pick pretty much ANY volatile commodity -- same thing.
Lithium prices are just back to pre-Pandemic prices. All mining companies should have been planning for this day. The other big threat to lithium is... sodium. The last expensive raw material in LFP cells is... lithium. Even at today's prices it's still very expensive compared to sodium. All we need is for someone to scale up a practical sodium-iron-phosphate or sodium-sulfur or sodium-other-cheap-material battery, and the lithium show will be pretty much over within a few years. Even if energy density is relatively low, stationary storage is currently using a lot of lithium.
More lithium schills purporting lithium is the only viable chemistry. Never mind Lithium thermal runaway the Conservative press has a field day with. Nevermind the super cheap price of sodium. Never mind the extraction pollution of lithium. Never mind all that the schills say. Sodium ion will never work.
A lot of money being spent in Cornwall (U.K.) on getting in to lithium mining. Appears there is plenty of it underground and at a decent percentage. Again the question is are they too late. By the time mining gets under way and the infrastructure Is in place there is a good possibility that battery technology will have moved on.
@neilkurzman4907 The other channels also made mention of Sodium Batteries. The way it looks at the moment. The world will have Quantum Batteries before Sodium Batteries.
@@icosthop9998tongue in cheek, Cornwall, land of my birth, is also surrounded by sodium in those freezing, but shark free, Atlantic waters! MIT have recently announced a knew way of going straight from brine to lithium metal, without all the intermediary processing hard rock mined ?spodumene? needs to be extract lithium. That’ll be a shocker!
We can't have it both ways. We need cheap lithium for cheap EVs. The same happened with silicon between 2004 and 2008 when its price shot through the roof before crashing back down. That's right, that's just sand and some coal. Both completely abundant. Yet traders pumped up the price through the roof. Yet silicon is very cheap today and many companies make very nice profits making it. It's the same with lithium. It's more abundant than oil. Pretty much anywhere sodium (salt) exists, so does lithium. The companies that will survive are those that can mine and refine it cheaply while still making a profit.
Anyone investing in highly volatile commodities in a way that is reliant on stable pricing AND doesn't put on serious hedges -- is insane. They'll get crushed like a bug. There are good reasons that things like crude oil producing AND consuming industries (oil companies and airlines, for example) tend to heavily use crude oil futures to HEDGE their costs to insure their profit margins. It's about management and planning ahead, since aside from hedging, such prices can't be controlled. And of course, such hedges are NOT free -- they're a cost of doing business and the primary reason the commodity futures markets EXIST.
@@rogergeyer9851 That's correct, prices are going down because of new big lithium mines coming online in Zimbabwe. And will continue going down because of new mine projects in Argentina and Bolivia.
Salton Sea lithium is case in point for long term lower cost production, especially when paired with existing geothermal power plants already pulling hot brine up to surface and then sending the cold back down. All they need to do is extract the lithium along the way.
the volcanic mud seems to have corroded all the DLE machines used in testing so far not a single company in salton sea has produced a gram of LI when they do produce some from a pilot plant and release a PEA report, it would be worth a look
I did say long term, didn't mean next week, month or year necessarily. I trust over time materials science will sort it out. Naysayers are welcome to trust what they will.
@@robcarvalho1 the problem starts with the sheer amount of brine required to produce a sizable production. The hot Brine is corrosive to everything requiring nickel Chrome alloys that are very expensive.... Corrosion means product impurity... Which can't have for battery grade material. Brine also has to be re-injected.... In a different place so you don't back dilute your feedstock.... When you look at the see your volumes of Brine needed per year..... You need...tens of thousands of acres for a single plant..... Networks of pipelines....miles of pipelines, dozens or even hundreds of wells, and people to run them and maintain them. It's just not that easy. And you can figure 2 million $ per well. Environmental impact... Foreshore. Eyesore... For sure. There's no free lunch that's the reality.
Good video. Sounds like AU needs its own processing plants to complete the process and a couple of Giga plants to make EV batteries. All it takes it money and customers in the EU and the US forget about China. It can be done with long term stablitiy too.
Cheapest spodumene producer is Marula Mining. Operations in South Africa and listed in London. Backed by South Africa's self made billionaire. It will be producing spodumene, Manganese, Cooper Cement and graphite sales this year with a first dividend year end. All for under £30m market cap. It will multi bag this year.
I have been researching this subject extensively over the past 6 months and I believe you are correct in saying this is the bottom. I have began investing everything i have in lithium, as well as the new Nickel mine in Minnesota, in the United States. All the companies that need the lithium for there batteries also need Nickel.
Copper may be a better investment right now...we still need wires for everything, including EVs. But I have no idea which copper mining company to invest in or how to invest in copper futures.
People have become sceptical about an EV future. That's one factor. The other is that lithium batteries as currently manufactured have long-term safety problems. Let the Chinese market absorb the lithium overstock while better batteries are designed.
Tough call, battery tech is changing all the time and if someone develops a cheaper/better alternative to lithium them those shares will become worthless. I suggest that you don't buy shares to trade, but as a long term investment.
Prices will briefly go up again before coming down yet again once the new mining sites in the US come online. They have many years of supply and are cheap to extract. Plus, there are reports of progress on the processes and costs of refinement. It'll still get cheaper, IMHO.
Supply and demand … There now is an abundance of supply across the world, so the price is going to stay low until there is an increase in demand again - repeating the cycle. I’m a mining engineer, it’s what naturally happens
When Li prices went through the roof, everyone increased production, and even expensive methods of extraction like (clay in China) became profitable. Overproduction led to price decreases and even today there are still stockpiles at the ready. However, low prices force miners to halt production and expensive extraction methods become unfeasable. New mines go without investment. This will lead to an eventual shortage and prices will rise. It only takes a small Li deficit to quickly increase prices. Low prices are the cure for low prices.
I bought Lake Resources lithium stock on the ASX for 6c about 3 years ago. It got over $2 briefly and is now back at 10c. I took profit and playing with house money on this one.
China Belt and Roads project is building mines in Indonesia and Africa without the regulations for Australian mining companies. Look at the volume of lithium being mined globally to see if production has just moved away from Australia.
Lithium is everywhere! It's like water, but a bit harder to extract. Short answer: you can get lithium from any place on Earth. And every one important has known that.
Predicting such commodity prices is VERY difficult, even for a year, much less "decades". Just look at crude oil, for an obvious example. It's VERY well known, VERY well established as a crucial commodity used in HUGE numbers of BBLs annually globally, and yet its price is ALL OVER THE PLACE, and super unpredictable over time.
My understanding is that there is NOT a shortage of lithium but rather a lack of processing of it (mainly all in China) and that’s why Tesla is building a lithium processing plant in the US. Also battery technology is rapidly evolving along with all related technology and lithium might not be a critical component in the long term.
i would say yes to invest , especially if one car manufacturer were to invest in a mining company. you need a solid foundation to weather the storm this time could be a great time to buy lithium at the bottom as it will rebound and set a new level
Like many commodities there is a great deal more lithium then is thought. Rock lithium deposits are not able to compete with Brine and Clay lithium deposits which are much more economical to extract and process.. Something like fracking is possible when tapping soluble lithium deposits and hard rock processing will not be able to compete economically with these methods.. Lithium abundancy is bad news for some mining operations and scarcity benefiting commodity traders but good news for humanity as it means we are not going to be a Lithium bottle neck unless humanity grows to hundreds of billions but by then we will probable have discover something much better.
Strategically, if we look at the demand it’s credible that Sodium Ion takes over a large chunk of the market, and for static power (renewables time shifting grid operations, home solar / backup power, ships etc) Li-Ion seems so ridiculous now. Lithium in lighter and premium vehicles seems like a long term play, so we will see how all that shakes out. But it’s not a lock on the long term market like it looked 5 years ago.
Lithium is over supplied, which is a good thing! We need more lithium, but companies will need to merge and pace their supply. My daughter and son both work in the rare earth mining industry of silver and gold, and they’re facing the same problem: over supply and lowering costs.
Jai Hinduja. Bowing to moneyed Wall street swamp men, the Biden regime is putting a brake on its climate change agenda to please UAW union, Legacy autos and car distributors etc. citing lack of efficient US supply chain manufacturing, inadequate charging infrastructure, ungreen EVs production processes and techno geopolitical rivalry.
There are dozens of recent battery technologies announced and yet none have come to the global market in the past 5 years. Companies keep announcing these so called breakthroughs but are unable to scale them so they just keep pushing for more investment and funding. Its not going to end well.
Didn't Musk say there was a lithium shortage a few years ago and Tesla would buy every ton that was produced? He also said he wasn't worried about copper because they were changing to 48v low volt system. Well copper is at all time highs and lithium at lows. Copper is still the way to play a renewable energy future
He said there was loads of lithium (a common element, periodic table #3) but it was Cobalt that was rare! What's the price of that per kilogram? The answer may give you a good steer.🎉
Sodium Ion batteries are now on the market, cheaper than lithium because (sodium is everywhere in nature), not the same VA/h but they do the job, i got few to test 18650 and 26700 format and they work, they do not use the same lithium batteries BMS but can use same chargers, the only downside i find is that must be charged more often but they seem to endure more charging cycles and do not have issues of cold or heat to operate.
Any experienced investor will tell you the bottom isn't what you're looking for, it's the rebound. If the price doesn't rise, you can be killed waiting for a ride that never happens. For lithium, the question of course is supply and demand. New battery technologies are being invented all the time and the future global energy source will be electricity but there are also cheap alternatives for energy storage and new lithium deposits are being discovered all the time. Lithium is one of the most plentiful elements in the Earth's crust but there are relatively few concentrations that can be economically mined.
All depends on if heavy vehicles go electric with current battery technology. As for passenger vehicles I think demand will depend on cost of living pressures.
With lower lithium prices should expect continued discounting in not only EVs but also mass storage solutions. Quite a few players in the mass storage space. Interesting to watch the evolution in mass storage, EVs and Hybrids.
The utility lithium battery fires in San Diego are getting some attention. Looks like the NIMBYs may look at them the same way they looked at nuclear plants.
China owned more then 50% of EV market , and china hv their own Litium supply chain , as usual , china has its way to produce cheaper litium and products , therefore its not surprise others litium companies unable to compete with china .
With several car manufacturers dropping or sharply curtailing EV production, electric companies adding costs to solar power owners (while getting laws promoting folks from going off the grid), interest rates sky high, and a global recession politicians deny but cannot hide, coupled to new major finds in Norway and USA, the price slump will last for a couple more years. By then the Ambri battery may be ready to grow into the higher- capacity side of this market. Yes it will come back - but probably at a slower rate than some companies can handle.
Simple cycle, reserves grew as miners expected higher prices. Low prices halt mines, reserves dropping prices already rising. EV uptake imminent, Tesla Model 2 pending
Most of us knew the sky high prices were not sustainable! Not sure if lithium and related stock prices will rebound significantly, with all the supply and legacy Auto quitting EV production lithium will take a long time to rebound and certainly won't go back to the crazy level. In fact it has room to go lower using pre-pandamic prices as baseline.
Really good that you mention how the OEMs are getting out of making EVs . 👍 _Many people have not got that memo yet_ . ( At least the OEMs have slowed down production of their EVs, because their EVs are sitting on the dealerships lots and no one is s buying them.) In North America the only EV that is selling is Tesla.
If and when solid state batteries are viable then I think lithium will still be in demand, but I do not think it will increase in price. If we develop an energy containment system that is equivalent and does not need lithium then it could go down .
List Lithium mining companies quoting their AISC and jurisdiction - it soon becomes clear where you should be investing. Note Chinese miners do not include waste management costs in their AISC and not recognised as being "Green" so are not preferred suppliers. Atlantic Lithium #A11 #ALL have a compelling investment case going forward with projected AISC of US$675/t.
I think not, Lithium is just one of the most common materials in the world. It's like buying a lot of sand because you need sand to make glass and solar panels contain glass and more and more solar panels are made.
Probably a good bet on Lithium companies. the year 1991, when Sony first got rechargeable Li batteries put into devices. It's been well over 30 years to get these batteries made cheap enough for the common device. Multi nations, multi companies. Even if Sodium Ion batteries or Solid-state batteries get manufacturing traction on device sold to consumers, it probably take at least 20 years from today. So Lithium will hold steady for at least 20 years.
I don't invest in this sort of thing, but lithium demand is still rising. EV batteries and other batteries continue to be a growth industry, and lithium is still a critical battery material despite emerging alternatives like sodium. If I were a betting man, I'd bet on a higher lithium price a year or two in the future, but lithium production must come down first. Production will eventually rise again but not before currently marginal producers are out of business. That's how capitalism works. Supply balances demand not because investors are always so brilliant but because high prices attract more investment and lower prices drive marginal production out of the market. The brilliant investor theory is basically the central planning theory. Booms and busts are not market failures. They're markets working.
Lithium prices are plummeting due to supply and demand. As EV sales continue to drop around world due to the lack of consumer demand lithium prices will follow this trend.
If you can't show a path to profitability the stock will go to zero. Kind of like when every farmer plants a whole lot of the same crop, you have good weather a bumper crop, and the stuff can't sell for much.You have to analyze the debt and cash flow to see if there is a possible plan to keep the company alive, given 3 years at today's price... if you line up all the lithium sources(mines, companies) sort them by the quality of the ore, only the cheapest to extract will survive.
Lithium was developed as it allows power to small expensive electronic devices like mobile phones. They got smaller and powered up for longer. Then they figured Lithium batteries could make cars go very much faster. Now, we’ve figured cars don’t need to go that fast. So cheaper metal ions can be used to power large electric vehicles. We don’t need Lithium as the main element in electric vehicles. Basic chemistry, have a look at an activity table.
Hard rock mining for lithium costs 50% more than lithium from salt flat brine and is even less competitive than filtering lithium from brine. Filtering lithium from brine is the future of lithium production.
I would be in with the current price!!! Hard to go any further down!!! We still need cordless tools and cellphones and at 19 cents then if you loose then it’s not the end of the world!!!!!
It’s not unusual for mining companies to put their operations into maintenance mode if the value of their product falls below a predetermined level. They sit it out and wait until the stockpiles are exhausted and there’s a shortage, then they fire up again but sell at a hugely increased price. These reductions in battery costs due to cheap lithium are only temporary, watch what happens down the track. Batteries are always going to be the Achilles heel of EVs, just like any other battery powered appliance.
Nice little bit of info, like only someone like you can pick out in a timely way... very nice Viking... thanks for the tip, I'm looking at it now... it makes sense... Tinto is literally one of those companies (too big to fail)
The very possibility of sodium being a viable alternative will mean that lithium would be completely wiped out of the market. As soon as sodium gets any traction, market is gone. Even at the same price as rock salt, lithium would probably struggle because of its many limitations.
the problem with Lithium isn't it's availability at this time, it's the cost of refinement as well as New Battery technologies being discovered on a regular basis, Sodium Batteries, Polymer Batteries, etc. Lithium could be dropped like a bad joke at a party if a much better battery technology appears in the next 5 years. Then there's my thinking that Batteries are just stop gap measures until the world puts the effort into producing Smaller and Micro modular Reactors, utilising Thorium or other safe technologies.
Exactly what is going to make the price of lithium rebound? Demand alone? I presume that the producers responsible for the current glut will resume production should the market improve and that the price of lithium does not have much potential to rise significantly until demand grows concomitantly.
I don't think I've ever seen a youtube video with a 3 minute outro before ... I'd say lithium is a long-term stock investment, but don't over-invest. Lithium is very common, but it's hard to know where/when/who will develop it.
It took time to increase mining and refining of lithium and now it will take time to build more factories and hire more people to increase the production of batteries from this cheap lithium. What I want to know is how this will affect battery recycling given lithium was already so cheap that there was little incentive to try get the tiny amount of it out of batteries?
This is the type of stock that can become a 20X bagger in 5 -7 years if the company executes well or gets bought out. The lithium story is a long one because all sorts of batteries need lithium. Green energy ultimately needs many batteries to store the power that is generated intermittently.
Technology evolves and changes all the time. It is always risky to associate oneself with technology-based industry or business. What has happened to Kodak, Fujifilm, Nokia, Alcatel and other American, European and Japanese tech based companies reminds us of vulnerability of tech based industry to ever changing technological landscape.
Some of them water evaporation farm & drain the water out of the ground to evaporate the lithium out of it. They end up stopped because they drain the aquifer.
This last winter in the U.S. showed EVs become side of the road paperweights in cold temperatures as EV battery charges run low and EV batteries cannot be recharged at charging stations. EVs still need technology breakthroughs to become reliable and viable. Toyota and Hyundai report HYBRID 2024 sales are way up. EV 2024 sales from all manufacturers are way down.
I think that most ev enthusiasts and renewable fold just don't get it. Generally people don't want ev's the range, cost weight just are not there yet. Not to mention the infrastructure to support it and to charge cars ur using coal is insane. I love new tech and I like rechargeable batteries and solor cells but it's not there yet.
There is a limited amount of lithium and an exponentially growing use for lithium batteries. Yes, to a big price rebound. 👍 When??? Hard to imagine more than five years, unless they ban electric cars, replace phones and laptops...
Non Lithium alternatives represent the bulk of battery storage technologies future. Give it 5 more years and you will see. So far EVs make up less than 5% of road vehicles. There's still another 95% of vehicles to be replaced over the long term.
*I can always tell when someone made a 3.0 or less GPA in chemistry, when they say foolishness like this.* _The periodic table of elements is arranged the way it is for a reason._ *_What metal comes before Lithium?_* EXACTLY. *You people should have stayed awake in school.*
Sam, you will have to take a step further with this analysis. Is the price reduction a result of supply and demand balance? Is lithium supply growing more that demand does? If yes, the company prices probably do not improve...
The collapse of the "lithium industry" is inevitable, with the popularity of substitute materials such as LFP which only uses a small amount of lithium and also sodium batteries which are much cheaper and more environmentally friendly, the lithium industry will lose its market.
When practical sodium batteries are better than all lithium batteries, be sure to get back to us on that. In the real world, the VAST majority of things in labs never reach large scale commercialization for a wide variety of reasons. Lithium being at something like a fifth of its former higher prices likely makes sense, given overall supply and demand and future forecasts for lithium and battery demand. It's all about supply and demand, re pricing, not the opinion of random RUclips commenter X, because they have an unfounded opinion.
So is large scale production of "Sodium Batteries" just a myth ?❔️ The rumor of so many breakthrough technologies in batteries and none of them have hit full scale production yet. 🤦🏼
Perhaps somebody overestimated the luxury vehicle demand .Maybe there was some thought that petroleum prices would lose their subsidies and "pump' prices would begin to reflect the true costs of petro fuels ?
Exactly. And this tends to happen a LOT with many commodities when they get expensive. The best remedy for high prices (over time) is high prices, at least until a commodity truly gets very scarce. Rare earth metals are much more common generally than was previously thought.
Only a fool thinks lithium is scarce. Concentrations of lithium high enough to economically extract..... Are scarce...... Mining is all about concentration.
That's a valid approach. But that has risk too, as the taxes, the storage expenses, the lack of cash flow for months or years or decades, etc. all ADDS UP. And many businesses don't have gigantic piles of cash or credit to endlessly use to gamble and hope they win.
nah that was just some short hype a wile back, sure we will need some lithium but there are more and more new developments with other materials wich may even work better for some applications i would guess that lithium mining demand has peaked, now only the ones that can produce cheap will stay and quite a few projects will be canceled. and from my experience once everybody talks about it, its mostly too late to start investing as its likely near a peak, might get better later but thats where you need to do your own research to find a decent entry point.
Seems like there is a boom in new battery tech with no reason to think lithium will come out on top at all. Same goes for rare earth magnets with things like iron nitride in the offing. Anyone remember NiCads?
Wasn't it only like 3 years or so ago there were saying there was not enough lithium in the world for all the batteries needed.🤔
I thought Musk said invest in Lithium mining because its a license to print money? I think that was a few years ago so it printed money for 3yrs?
...LFPs need only very Lithium. And Sodium-Ion none at all.
How many batteries are needed?
@@timothykeith1367 don't know, but that's exactly what the claims were. That we could not transition to EV's because there was not enough lithium to do it.🤔
i guess the "narrative" was wrong, yet again. shocked. i'm shocked i tell ya!
E.V. sales have tanked. People are not happy with them. Poor recharge infrastructure!long trip limits etc.
it was a scam from the start
Oh it goes far beyond that. EV are glorified shopping cars. Super short range, sky high price and very short life
Lil louder th model Y didn’t hear you
Dead batteries too. The 2-6 screen in the EVs are tablets that send and receive signals and updates when the cars are off. And people are waking up to find out they need to charge their car 3 hours before work.
Consumers are finally waking up to the nonsense of owning an EV.
While there is a temporary glut in lithium stocks, the demand will increase. Lithium however is not a rare resource, the winners will be miners who can be the most efficient.
2 other important criteria for me, geo-politics (location) and Management (what they've done in the past will likely be repeated)
The death of ICE has been greatly exaggerated. Hertz the rental car company found that out the hard way. Green is the new red. Oil is still black gold.
They had a long term offtake agreement with Tesla when the price was high, with guaranteed offtakes, but turned it down in hope for a better offer. Unfortunate decision.
It's impossible to see the future. A couple years back, all the rage was to predict STRATOSPHERIC lithium prices in coming years.
In a similar way, crude oil prices are HIGHLY volatile and EXTREMELY difficult to predict accurately over time.
Or pick pretty much ANY volatile commodity -- same thing.
@@rogergeyer9851 if mines are closing prices will go back up. There are not enough mines for the long term needs.
It is impossible to see the future for just about anything.
In 1997, the last thing any one seen is a pandemic called *"**#Wuhan_Virus**"* . 🤒
EV car sales are turning bad. Public weaking up to negative side of cars etc
Hitting the bottom and mining stock prices going up ain't the same! It can take many, many years before the trend in stocks reverse!
ICE ICE baby !
Lithium prices are just back to pre-Pandemic prices. All mining companies should have been planning for this day. The other big threat to lithium is... sodium. The last expensive raw material in LFP cells is... lithium. Even at today's prices it's still very expensive compared to sodium. All we need is for someone to scale up a practical sodium-iron-phosphate or sodium-sulfur or sodium-other-cheap-material battery, and the lithium show will be pretty much over within a few years. Even if energy density is relatively low, stationary storage is currently using a lot of lithium.
Nah ... It took 25 years to get lithium batteries to the current state. Sodium just doesn't have the energy density capability
If lithium stays this cheap (which it wont) sodium has no future.
@@monkeysezbegood 🤔
When lithium gets expensive, they’ll switch to Sodium. Then Sodium gets expensive, they’ll go back to lithium.
More lithium schills purporting lithium is the only viable chemistry. Never mind
Lithium thermal runaway the Conservative press has a field day with.
Nevermind the super cheap price of sodium.
Never mind the extraction pollution of lithium.
Never mind all that the schills say. Sodium ion will never work.
A lot of money being spent in Cornwall (U.K.) on getting in to lithium mining. Appears there is plenty of it underground and at a decent percentage. Again the question is are they too late. By the time mining gets under way and the infrastructure Is in place there is a good possibility that battery technology will have moved on.
The thought of "Sodium Batteries" should cause some hesitation and concerns . 🤔
@@icosthop9998
You do know that those batteries aren’t gonna be suitable for electronics. And there were a lot of batteries used for electronics.
@neilkurzman4907 The other channels also made mention of Sodium Batteries.
The way it looks at the moment.
The world will have Quantum Batteries before Sodium Batteries.
@@icosthop9998
When sodium batteries actually exist in commercial quantities, then I will pay attention to them.
@@icosthop9998tongue in cheek, Cornwall, land of my birth, is also surrounded by sodium in those freezing, but shark free, Atlantic waters!
MIT have recently announced a knew way of going straight from brine to lithium metal, without all the intermediary processing hard rock mined ?spodumene? needs to be extract lithium. That’ll be a shocker!
Where will all those 8 year olds in the Congo find work? Sad
We can't have it both ways. We need cheap lithium for cheap EVs. The same happened with silicon between 2004 and 2008 when its price shot through the roof before crashing back down. That's right, that's just sand and some coal. Both completely abundant. Yet traders pumped up the price through the roof. Yet silicon is very cheap today and many companies make very nice profits making it.
It's the same with lithium. It's more abundant than oil. Pretty much anywhere sodium (salt) exists, so does lithium. The companies that will survive are those that can mine and refine it cheaply while still making a profit.
Anyone investing in highly volatile commodities in a way that is reliant on stable pricing AND doesn't put on serious hedges -- is insane. They'll get crushed like a bug.
There are good reasons that things like crude oil producing AND consuming industries (oil companies and airlines, for example) tend to heavily use crude oil futures to HEDGE their costs to insure their profit margins.
It's about management and planning ahead, since aside from hedging, such prices can't be controlled. And of course, such hedges are NOT free -- they're a cost of doing business and the primary reason the commodity futures markets EXIST.
Lithium prices are NOT cheap. They are just the same as in 2019 before the bubble. They should be even cheaper to make EV batteries competitive.
Are you an idiot? You can literally look it up. It's cheap. When the hell did the price of something 5 years ago matter?
Over time, it's all about supply and demand, not what you think prices "should" be.
@@rogergeyer9851 That's correct, prices are going down because of new big lithium mines coming online in Zimbabwe. And will continue going down because of new mine projects in Argentina and Bolivia.
Overtime it's all about margin.... And affordability.... And it all comes down to the concentration of the source
They are cheap if mines are closing. Prices must and will rise as demand increases.
Salton Sea lithium is case in point for long term lower cost production, especially when paired with existing geothermal power plants already pulling hot brine up to surface and then sending the cold back down. All they need to do is extract the lithium along the way.
the volcanic mud seems to have corroded all the DLE machines used in testing
so far not a single company in salton sea has produced a gram of LI
when they do produce some from a pilot plant and release a PEA report, it would be worth a look
It's not.
I did say long term, didn't mean next week, month or year necessarily. I trust over time materials science will sort it out. Naysayers are welcome to trust what they will.
@@robcarvalho1 the problem starts with the sheer amount of brine required to produce a sizable production. The hot Brine is corrosive to everything requiring nickel Chrome alloys that are very expensive.... Corrosion means product impurity... Which can't have for battery grade material. Brine also has to be re-injected.... In a different place so you don't back dilute your feedstock.... When you look at the see your volumes of Brine needed per year..... You need...tens of thousands of acres for a single plant..... Networks of pipelines....miles of pipelines, dozens or even hundreds of wells, and people to run them and maintain them. It's just not that easy. And you can figure 2 million $ per well. Environmental impact... Foreshore. Eyesore... For sure. There's no free lunch that's the reality.
The mining at the Salton Sea will eventually lead to earthquakes and possibly the bug one. Will it be worth it?
Good video. Sounds like AU needs its own processing plants to complete the process and a couple of Giga plants to make EV batteries. All it takes it money and customers in the EU and the US forget about China. It can be done with long term stablitiy too.
Cheapest spodumene producer is Marula Mining. Operations in South Africa and listed in London. Backed by South Africa's self made billionaire. It will be producing spodumene, Manganese, Cooper Cement and graphite sales this year with a first dividend year end. All for under £30m market cap. It will multi bag this year.
I have been researching this subject extensively over the past 6 months and I believe you are correct in saying this is the bottom. I have began investing everything i have in lithium, as well as the new Nickel mine in Minnesota, in the United States. All the companies that need the lithium for there batteries also need Nickel.
Thanks so much Sam
Looks like EV reluctance and hesitancy has pushed back way up the supply chain. Good.
Wow your a stock market expert . my liuthum stock is up 522 % from when I brought it
And nobody gives a fk.
Copper may be a better investment right now...we still need wires for everything, including EVs. But I have no idea which copper mining company to invest in or how to invest in copper futures.
Interesting video Sam. Seems like Lithium isn't the scarce resource we were told is was.
Yeah
People have become sceptical about an EV future. That's one factor. The other is that lithium batteries as currently manufactured have long-term safety problems.
Let the Chinese market absorb the lithium overstock while better batteries are designed.
Tough call, battery tech is changing all the time and if someone develops a cheaper/better alternative to lithium them those shares will become worthless. I suggest that you don't buy shares to trade, but as a long term investment.
Prices will briefly go up again before coming down yet again once the new mining sites in the US come online. They have many years of supply and are cheap to extract. Plus, there are reports of progress on the processes and costs of refinement. It'll still get cheaper, IMHO.
Supply and demand … There now is an abundance of supply across the world, so the price is going to stay low until there is an increase in demand again - repeating the cycle. I’m a mining engineer, it’s what naturally happens
I will stick to my modified 1961 Mercury Comet .It gets 25 MPG highway.
When Li prices went through the roof, everyone increased production, and even expensive methods of extraction like (clay in China) became profitable. Overproduction led to price decreases and even today there are still stockpiles at the ready. However, low prices force miners to halt production and expensive extraction methods become unfeasable. New mines go without investment. This will lead to an eventual shortage and prices will rise. It only takes a small Li deficit to quickly increase prices. Low prices are the cure for low prices.
I bought Lake Resources lithium stock on the ASX for 6c about 3 years ago. It got over $2 briefly and is now back at 10c. I took profit and playing with house money on this one.
seem like a good opportunity to buy the deep. I start a small position in LAC, ALTM, and SQM
China Belt and Roads project is building mines in Indonesia and Africa without the regulations for Australian mining companies. Look at the volume of lithium being mined globally to see if production has just moved away from Australia.
Haven’t massive amounts of Lithium been found in Norway, South America, and the USA, thereby driving prices down for decades to come?
Lithium is everywhere! It's like water, but a bit harder to extract. Short answer: you can get lithium from any place on Earth. And every one important has known that.
@@MH-Tesla Thank you. It is good to hear from those who have a better understanding of geology than I do.
There is no shortage of raw lithium. Most of the cost comes from extraction and refining.
Predicting such commodity prices is VERY difficult, even for a year, much less "decades".
Just look at crude oil, for an obvious example. It's VERY well known, VERY well established as a crucial commodity used in HUGE numbers of BBLs annually globally, and yet its price is ALL OVER THE PLACE, and super unpredictable over time.
My understanding is that there is NOT a shortage of lithium but rather a lack of processing of it (mainly all in China) and that’s why Tesla is building a lithium processing plant in the US. Also battery technology is rapidly evolving along with all related technology and lithium might not be a critical component in the long term.
i would say yes to invest , especially if one car manufacturer were to invest in a mining company. you need a solid foundation to weather the storm this time could be a great time to buy lithium at the bottom as it will rebound and set a new level
Like many commodities there is a great deal more lithium then is thought. Rock lithium deposits are not able to compete with Brine and Clay lithium deposits which are much more economical to extract and process.. Something like fracking is possible when tapping soluble lithium deposits and hard rock processing will not be able to compete economically with these methods..
Lithium abundancy is bad news for some mining operations and scarcity benefiting commodity traders but good news for humanity as it means we are not going to be a Lithium bottle neck unless humanity grows to hundreds of billions but by then we will probable have discover something much better.
Strategically, if we look at the demand it’s credible that Sodium Ion takes over a large chunk of the market, and for static power (renewables time shifting grid operations, home solar / backup power, ships etc) Li-Ion seems so ridiculous now.
Lithium in lighter and premium vehicles seems like a long term play, so we will see how all that shakes out. But it’s not a lock on the long term market like it looked 5 years ago.
Lithium is over supplied, which is a good thing! We need more lithium, but companies will need to merge and pace their supply. My daughter and son both work in the rare earth mining industry of silver and gold, and they’re facing the same problem: over supply and lowering costs.
Mining is nothing to invest for ordinary people...only for those who are ready to lose 100% of their investment.
Jai Hinduja. Bowing to moneyed Wall street swamp men, the Biden regime is putting a brake on its climate change agenda to please UAW union, Legacy autos and car distributors etc. citing lack of efficient US supply chain manufacturing, inadequate charging infrastructure, ungreen EVs production processes and techno geopolitical rivalry.
And over supply of *Gold* , that is new 😳
Gold and silver aren’t rare earths
*Oversupply is not good. Companies only work for money. If there's no money in mining lithium, they will stop. Did you watch this video AT ALL?*
I would Stay Away.... recent advancements are making Lithium batteries Obsolete
I won’t matter how many batteries are made, we don’t have the infrastructure to charge them.
There are dozens of recent battery technologies announced and yet none have come to the global market in the past 5 years. Companies keep announcing these so called breakthroughs but are unable to scale them so they just keep pushing for more investment and funding. Its not going to end well.
Lithium Carbonate peaked at CNY 600,000 in Nov of 2022 has dropped to 97,000 and has recently ticked up in the last month to 115,500.
Didn't Musk say there was a lithium shortage a few years ago and Tesla would buy every ton that was produced? He also said he wasn't worried about copper because they were changing to 48v low volt system. Well copper is at all time highs and lithium at lows. Copper is still the way to play a renewable energy future
Lithium is nowhere near ATLs...
He said there was loads of lithium (a common element, periodic table #3) but it was Cobalt that was rare! What's the price of that per kilogram? The answer may give you a good steer.🎉
Sodium Ion batteries are now on the market, cheaper than lithium because (sodium is everywhere in nature), not the same VA/h but they do the job, i got few to test 18650 and 26700 format and they work, they do not use the same lithium batteries BMS but can use same chargers, the only downside i find is that must be charged more often but they seem to endure more charging cycles and do not have issues of cold or heat to operate.
Any experienced investor will tell you the bottom isn't what you're looking for, it's the rebound. If the price doesn't rise, you can be killed waiting for a ride that never happens.
For lithium, the question of course is supply and demand.
New battery technologies are being invented all the time and the future global energy source will be electricity but there are also cheap alternatives for energy storage and new lithium deposits are being discovered all the time. Lithium is one of the most plentiful elements in the Earth's crust but there are relatively few concentrations that can be economically mined.
All depends on if heavy vehicles go electric with current battery technology.
As for passenger vehicles I think demand will depend on cost of living pressures.
With lower lithium prices should expect continued discounting in not only EVs but also mass storage solutions. Quite a few players in the mass storage space. Interesting to watch the evolution in mass storage, EVs and Hybrids.
The utility lithium battery fires in San Diego are getting some attention. Looks like the NIMBYs may look at them the same way they looked at nuclear plants.
China owned more then 50% of EV market , and china hv their own Litium supply chain , as usual , china has its way to produce cheaper litium and products , therefore its not surprise others litium companies unable to compete with china .
With several car manufacturers dropping or sharply curtailing EV production, electric companies adding costs to solar power owners (while getting laws promoting folks from going off the grid), interest rates sky high, and a global recession politicians deny but cannot hide, coupled to new major finds in Norway and USA, the price slump will last for a couple more years. By then the Ambri battery may be ready to grow into the higher- capacity side of this market. Yes it will come back - but probably at a slower rate than some companies can handle.
Looking at lithium prices, i think it has bottomed to pre covid levels.
Demand is still there making huge bayteries for the power companies.
Simple cycle, reserves grew as miners expected higher prices. Low prices halt mines, reserves dropping prices already rising. EV uptake imminent, Tesla Model 2 pending
Most of us knew the sky high prices were not sustainable! Not sure if lithium and related stock prices will rebound significantly, with all the supply and legacy Auto quitting EV production lithium will take a long time to rebound and certainly won't go back to the crazy level. In fact it has room to go lower using pre-pandamic prices as baseline.
Really good that you mention how the OEMs are getting out of making EVs . 👍
_Many people have not got that memo yet_ .
( At least the OEMs have slowed down production of their EVs, because their EVs are sitting on the dealerships lots and no one is s buying them.)
In North America the only EV that is selling is Tesla.
If and when solid state batteries are viable then I think lithium will still be in demand, but I do not think it will increase in price. If we develop an energy containment system that is equivalent and does not need lithium then it could go down .
List Lithium mining companies quoting their AISC and jurisdiction - it soon becomes clear where you should be investing. Note Chinese miners do not include waste management costs in their AISC and not recognised as being "Green" so are not preferred suppliers. Atlantic Lithium #A11 #ALL have a compelling investment case going forward with projected AISC of US$675/t.
I think not, Lithium is just one of the most common materials in the world.
It's like buying a lot of sand because you need sand to make glass and solar panels contain glass and more and more solar panels are made.
Probably a good bet on Lithium companies. the year 1991, when Sony first got rechargeable Li batteries put into devices. It's been well over 30 years to get these batteries made cheap enough for the common device. Multi nations, multi companies. Even if Sodium Ion batteries or Solid-state batteries get manufacturing traction on device sold to consumers, it probably take at least 20 years from today. So Lithium will hold steady for at least 20 years.
When solid state batteries come on line that will have a large impact on the lithium market.
Battery technologies are constantly changing...
Lithium is being phased out.
I don't invest in this sort of thing, but lithium demand is still rising. EV batteries and other batteries continue to be a growth industry, and lithium is still a critical battery material despite emerging alternatives like sodium. If I were a betting man, I'd bet on a higher lithium price a year or two in the future, but lithium production must come down first. Production will eventually rise again but not before currently marginal producers are out of business. That's how capitalism works. Supply balances demand not because investors are always so brilliant but because high prices attract more investment and lower prices drive marginal production out of the market. The brilliant investor theory is basically the central planning theory. Booms and busts are not market failures. They're markets working.
Lithium prices are plummeting due to supply and demand. As EV sales continue to drop around world due to the lack of consumer demand lithium prices will follow this trend.
The bottleneck is in refining as opposed to mining lithium. I don't see prices getting back to where they were.
If you can't show a path to profitability the stock will go to zero. Kind of like when every farmer plants a whole lot of the same crop, you have good weather a bumper crop, and the stuff can't sell for much.You have to analyze the debt and cash flow to see if there is a possible plan to keep the company alive, given 3 years at today's price...
if you line up all the lithium sources(mines, companies) sort them by the quality of the ore, only the cheapest to extract will survive.
Lithium was developed as it allows power to small expensive electronic devices like mobile phones. They got smaller and powered up for longer. Then they figured Lithium batteries could make cars go very much faster. Now, we’ve figured cars don’t need to go that fast. So cheaper metal ions can be used to power large electric vehicles.
We don’t need Lithium as the main element in electric vehicles. Basic chemistry, have a look at an activity table.
They thought everyone was going to buy EVs and demand was going to be super high but I guess the demand isn't high enough to keep the prices up
Supply increased faster. It's all about supply AND demand in economics. Go figure.
Hard rock mining for lithium costs 50% more than lithium from salt flat brine and is even less competitive than filtering lithium from brine. Filtering lithium from brine is the future of lithium production.
Nice video, thank you ❤
when you consider that sodium ion batteries are starting are now coming into the market this could signal the end for lithium
I would be in with the current price!!! Hard to go any further down!!! We still need cordless tools and cellphones and at 19 cents then if you loose then it’s not the end of the world!!!!!
It’s not unusual for mining companies to put their operations into maintenance mode if the value of their product falls below a predetermined level. They sit it out and wait until the stockpiles are exhausted and there’s a shortage, then they fire up again but sell at a hugely increased price. These reductions in battery costs due to cheap lithium are only temporary, watch what happens down the track. Batteries are always going to be the Achilles heel of EVs, just like any other battery powered appliance.
Nice little bit of info, like only someone like you can pick out in a timely way... very nice Viking... thanks for the tip, I'm looking at it now... it makes sense... Tinto is literally one of those companies (too big to fail)
Glad to help
The very possibility of sodium being a viable alternative will mean that lithium would be completely wiped out of the market. As soon as sodium gets any traction, market is gone. Even at the same price as rock salt, lithium would probably struggle because of its many limitations.
I nearly invested in ARU , it went to nearly 70 cents per share, now it's struggling at about 12 cents!
It just did hit the bottom.
This is the problem when people speculate. This is just the price two or three years ago. When people are too greedy, they will have to take the risk.
the problem with Lithium isn't it's availability at this time, it's the cost of refinement as well as New Battery technologies being discovered on a regular basis, Sodium Batteries, Polymer Batteries, etc. Lithium could be dropped like a bad joke at a party if a much better battery technology appears in the next 5 years. Then there's my thinking that Batteries are just stop gap measures until the world puts the effort into producing Smaller and Micro modular Reactors, utilising Thorium or other safe technologies.
Exactly what is going to make the price of lithium rebound? Demand alone? I presume that the producers responsible for the current glut will resume production should the market improve and that the price of lithium does not have much potential to rise significantly until demand grows concomitantly.
It may have hit the bottom, but that does not mean it will rise. Especially as other battery technologies are coming online.
My American lithium stock is doing amazing!
I don't think I've ever seen a youtube video with a 3 minute outro before ...
I'd say lithium is a long-term stock investment, but don't over-invest. Lithium is very common, but it's hard to know where/when/who will develop it.
I heard that Sodium-Ion is the more promising future for EV. Cheaper and safer.
It took time to increase mining and refining of lithium and now it will take time to build more factories and hire more people to increase the production of batteries from this cheap lithium.
What I want to know is how this will affect battery recycling given lithium was already so cheap that there was little incentive to try get the tiny amount of it out of batteries?
I got Albermarle early in 2023 at ~$180 and it's lost 50% of it's value. New battery tech (solid state, Sodium etc) and Hydrogen may displace Lithium.
This is the type of stock that can become a 20X bagger in 5 -7 years if the company executes well or gets bought out. The lithium story is a long one because all sorts of batteries need lithium. Green energy ultimately needs many batteries to store the power that is generated intermittently.
Technology evolves and changes all the time. It is always risky to associate oneself with technology-based industry or business. What has happened to Kodak, Fujifilm, Nokia, Alcatel and other American, European and Japanese tech based companies reminds us of vulnerability of tech based industry to ever changing technological landscape.
Don't call the bottom, until you see which way Sodium is going.
Some of them water evaporation farm & drain the water out of the ground to evaporate the lithium out of it. They end up stopped because they drain the aquifer.
Elon musk said that the big problem is there is not enough pocessing plants and there is no shortage of minerals.
This last winter in the U.S. showed EVs become side of the road paperweights in cold temperatures as EV battery charges run low and EV batteries cannot be recharged at charging stations. EVs still need technology breakthroughs to become reliable and viable.
Toyota and Hyundai report HYBRID 2024 sales are way up. EV 2024 sales from all manufacturers are way down.
I think that most ev enthusiasts and renewable fold just don't get it. Generally people don't want ev's the range, cost weight just are not there yet. Not to mention the infrastructure to support it and to charge cars ur using coal is insane. I love new tech and I like rechargeable batteries and solor cells but it's not there yet.
Viking, you presented a serious brain teaser. I recently purchased EnergyX stock. Time will tell. Thanks.
There is a limited amount of lithium and an exponentially growing use for lithium batteries.
Yes, to a big price rebound. 👍
When???
Hard to imagine more than five years, unless they ban electric cars, replace phones and laptops...
The difference between a glut and a supply shortage is worked out on a 1 percent surplus. The Chinese have manipulated theithium price.
Non Lithium alternatives represent the bulk of battery storage technologies future. Give it 5 more years and you will see. So far EVs make up less than 5% of road vehicles. There's still another 95% of vehicles to be replaced over the long term.
These new EVs wont require Lithium batteries, because in 5 years time super charging will be ubiquitous at at least 50km intervals.
ICE cars are the future. EVS are just a fad.
*I can always tell when someone made a 3.0 or less GPA in chemistry, when they say foolishness like this.*
_The periodic table of elements is arranged the way it is for a reason._
*_What metal comes before Lithium?_*
EXACTLY.
*You people should have stayed awake in school.*
@@m4rvinmartianhydrogen has a metallic phase...
Sam, you will have to take a step further with this analysis. Is the price reduction a result of supply and demand balance? Is lithium supply growing more that demand does? If yes, the company prices probably do not improve...
IMHO it’s time to start investing in oil, gas, coal and Nuclear.
The collapse of the "lithium industry" is inevitable, with the popularity of substitute materials such as LFP which only uses a small amount of lithium and also sodium batteries which are much cheaper and more environmentally friendly, the lithium industry will lose its market.
Sodium batteries are the away song for lithium
I can always tell when someone made 3.0 GPA or less in chemistry.
When practical sodium batteries are better than all lithium batteries, be sure to get back to us on that. In the real world, the VAST majority of things in labs never reach large scale commercialization for a wide variety of reasons.
Lithium being at something like a fifth of its former higher prices likely makes sense, given overall supply and demand and future forecasts for lithium and battery demand. It's all about supply and demand, re pricing, not the opinion of random RUclips commenter X, because they have an unfounded opinion.
So is large scale production of "Sodium Batteries" just a myth ?❔️
The rumor of so many breakthrough technologies in batteries and none of them have hit full scale production yet. 🤦🏼
Perhaps somebody overestimated the luxury vehicle demand .Maybe there was some thought that petroleum prices would lose their subsidies and "pump' prices would begin to reflect the true costs of petro fuels ?
Lithium is not as scarce as we think. Its popping up everywhere
Exactly. And this tends to happen a LOT with many commodities when they get expensive. The best remedy for high prices (over time) is high prices, at least until a commodity truly gets very scarce.
Rare earth metals are much more common generally than was previously thought.
Only a fool thinks lithium is scarce. Concentrations of lithium high enough to economically extract..... Are scarce...... Mining is all about concentration.
We all know what a great stock picker you are..byd, Tesla? Short Toyota? You are what we call cramner indicator.
Your idea about equities is spot on only you should trade, not invest in them.
Do like the oil industry, mine it, store it, and wait for the price to go up to sell it.
That's a valid approach. But that has risk too, as the taxes, the storage expenses, the lack of cash flow for months or years or decades, etc. all ADDS UP. And many businesses don't have gigantic piles of cash or credit to endlessly use to gamble and hope they win.
nah that was just some short hype a wile back, sure we will need some lithium but there are more and more new developments with other materials wich may even work better for some applications i would guess that lithium mining demand has peaked, now only the ones that can produce cheap will stay and quite a few projects will be canceled.
and from my experience once everybody talks about it, its mostly too late to start investing as its likely near a peak, might get better later but thats where you need to do your own research to find a decent entry point.
Seems like there is a boom in new battery tech with no reason to think lithium will come out on top at all. Same goes for rare earth magnets with things like iron nitride in the offing. Anyone remember NiCads?
There has been talk about batteries without Lithium, such as sodium. Don't know if any of them will pan out.