大宗商品

Lithium/iron ore: getting it spot wrong

In a year when almost every commodity rallied, the soaring price of lithium stood out

Even in a year when almost every commodity has rallied hard, the soaring price of lithium stands out. Lex got it wrong by asserting that this thinly traded metal might have peaked back in March. Instead, lithium has nearly tripled to about $35,000 a tonne.

True, Lex may simply be early, as with iron ore. That was another metal that we thought would depreciate, which it eventually did. Either way, some navel-gazing on what happened in both markets this year is in order.

The reason to question lithium’s price hinged upon supply. Rocks that contain traces of lithium, as with so-called rare earth metals, exist in abundance — even though the difficulty of extracting the highly reactive metal restricts the supply. Moreover, demand forecasts do not exceed expected supply even with surging electric vehicle demand for batteries, according to Tom Price at Liberum.

您已閱讀42%(864字),剩餘58%(1206字)包含更多重要資訊,訂閱以繼續探索完整內容,並享受更多專屬服務。
版權聲明:本文版權歸FT中文網所有,未經允許任何單位或個人不得轉載,複製或以任何其他方式使用本文全部或部分,侵權必究。
設置字型大小×
最小
較小
默認
較大
最大
分享×