Featured Lithium price collapse, predictable

I also do not love alterations of words inside [QUOTE] markup ... other than the straightforward ellipsis (...) and editorial insertions in square brackets we all learned to do in school so it's always clear what's what.

In the case of #18, I could tell what fuzzy1 was up to, from the strikethrough markup and the "Fixed it for you" after the quote. At least it wasn't a case of trying to look like the person quoted had actually said something else. (We've had a few of those cases around here too.)

I think it would have been better to put each strikethrough, and the words substituted for the struck-through ones, in square brackets, so a reader sees exactly what's changed.

 

I don’t take myself that seriously, but I understand

 

This is an informal, online discussion. Conventions among such have be altered by the fact many users aren't using full keyboards, or simply are eliminating keystrokes. Fixed it for you, or FIFY, alone is considered enough to denote the replier altered the quoted section. Strikethrough, and even just bolding the change is considered extra.

 

8 billion people transitioning from fossil fuels to electric is going to create all kinds of market chaos. Perhaps the insane volatility of the Lithium market due to over-zealous global investments is to the point that we're likely going to harm the ability to scale up to produce large quantities of it... I know in China the market shocks to Lithium as covid was ending had created all kinds of challenges and steered significant investments into Sodium-ion, which if successful would crash the lithium market even further in years to come.

 

This chart is also a good indicator of when the world's nations first realized they needed to invest heavily in Lithium futures and then the whole market falling apart soon as they realized how far past overproduction of Lithium was in the pipeline.

 

Article in this week's Economist telling of Lithium mines closing, deals being backed out of, refineries closing ...

 

The market had a failed onramp into the global economy because capitalism is too corrupt to participate in an orderly moderate transition to keep the price stable...

 

I followed a form that appears fairly common on this and other forums, a form that a number of others have done to my postings. No one else here appears to have been confused by it. Though I will consider another's suggestions about how to apply and mark it in an even more unambiguously clear fashion in the future.

I know what you meant, and am disputing it.

First, I can't see what is behind the paywall on your linked WSJ article, but this portion of the teaser:

suggests that lithium production did not decline, but instead that the market output was seeing "easing demand growth," i.e. slower growth, not actually declining or falling off.

Second, in the most recent figures I can find, despite last year's price collapse (see price chart in post #6 of this thread), lithium production still increased -- considerably so:

As for EV car unit numbers instead of bulk lithium, I am seeing indicators that global EV sales for Q1 - H1 of 2024 are lower than Q3 - Q4 - H2 of 2023. But compared to the same periods last year, i.e year-over-year, global sales are still up.

One comment was that at national levels, German sales did drop at the same time a subsidy was cut. And the Norwegian market was already nearly saturated at 90%, so simply has very little remaining growth potential.

 

There is plenty of lithium on the planet, but it takes time to develop a new source. As long as deposits are in multiple countries with multiple players, then there will be a boom/bust cycle of prices. Develop too little the price goes up, which increases investment, and eventually supply, which drives prices back down. Sodium will not crash the lithium market, but it may help the price swings when there has been underinvestment in lithium.

I am not sure how you speculate it was MBAs or even that it was wrong. There was a battery shortage in both manufacturing capability and materials supply. Companies invested because not having batteries cost them more than paying extra for plants and materials. It takes time to add new production so prices fell back to non shortage levels. The oversupply today will not be enough in 5 years, so the cycle will repeat. Prices today are about double what they were a decade ago for lithium carbonate before BEVs took supply, so these miners are not really losing money.

Once you have spent the capital costs, then you only look at variable costs, which are much lower than the cost of the ore. Now if there was no competition then they simply would collude like opec and keep the prices high. Now that investments have been made it makes sense to produce, unless you are predicting a big shortage in the future.

 

He did it completely upfront, with strike-outs and bold text, acting "editorially". Basically just a method to show where his opinion differs.

 

At some time or another, we all occasionally have at least a touch of the ailment referred to as "thin-skinned-itis"

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will this crash result in lower bev prices?

 

Wouldn't doubt it. Wait'll battery recycling takes off.

 

Huh. It's weird, for some reason PriusChat bold text, and only on PriusChat, stopped showing up as bold in my browser a year or two ago. Looks just the same as non-bold text. I spent a little time trying to figure out why, then gave up.

So when I saw the post, I saw the strike-outs but not the bolding. Hence my suggestion to better mark which part was meant to replace the strike-out. If I'd seen the bolding maybe I wouldn't have bothered about it.