looks like a great trading day for lyc (imho), page-40

5to12, I guess the best comparison might be the retail & wholesale markets.

The Lynas "basket" price is based on prices from Metal Pages.
Check their website and you'll find:
"Metal Prices - Rare Earths - Prices are indicative, and based in warehouse Rotterdam duty unpaid unless otherwise stated."

http://www.metal-pages.com/metalprices/rareearths/

Now if I'm a Japanese magnet manufacturer looking for 100t of Nd/Pr over the next 6 months I'm not going to a Rotterdam W/house to buy it anymore than I'd go to a corner milk bar.

Maybe I'm not big enough to go direct to the primary producer but I'll deal with one of their trading agents and negotiate an individual deal at "wholesale", unless of course I can find a smuggler who'll cut me a better deal by sharing some of the 30% of tariffs & taxes he's managed to avoid.

Lynas has 22kt to sell and needs to negotiate offtakes of scale so I very much doubt any of it would go thru Metal Page's w/house at their "retail" $37.45kg but even if it did Metal Pages would capture a margin and Lynas would receive say 20% less than the "retail" price - $30kg.

As far as I can determine the Metal Pages prices are used as an indicator because they are the only regularly published prices that provide guidance to values, pretty much the majority of RE transactions are done thru confidential agreements. The Baotou trading platform is designed to provide more transparency, probably to try and cut out middlemen where possible and reduce smuggling. Will be interesting to see if they make any pricing data publicly available.

JPM estimates "realised" or sales price at $25kg/FY13, $27/FY14 & $30/FY15, the increase solely due to firming Nd/Pr on magnet demand. They actually have SEG/HRE declining $73/66/65 which doesn't surprise me given the tiny current demand/supply numbers.

The reason I quote Molymess's last Q's "realised" price of $19kg re $26kg basket is because it totally supports JPM's Lynas estimate. And it is relevant as Molymess sells into an almost identical market. Only way Molymess will make it to next Thanksgiving in one piece will be as the turkey. If Con K takes the CEO job we'll see massive writedowns as a prelude to a mid year breakup IMO.

Hope that helps.