Ann: Globally significant MRE of 59MT at Adina Lithium Project, page-830

Chinese manipulation of lithium prices?

It's interesting to see the GFEX carbonate futures contracts in mild backwardation, but notable that the COMEX hydroxide contracts are in strong contango (16.98 for front month and 25.25 for Nov 2025). GFEX is the much bigger market but COMEX contracts have not insignificant volume.

https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/COMEX-LTH1!/contracts/
https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/metals/battery-metals/lithium-hydroxide-cif-cjk-fastmarkets.html
https://www.metal.com/Lithium

Some issues have been noted with the quality of physical deliveries from GFEX. Their market is a dysfunctional tool for actually buying lithium chemicals, with these issues meaning genuine buyers are disincentivized to participate. It's therefore a very functional tool for manipulating lithium sentiment. Its launch of lithium contracts in 2023 coincided with the downturn in lithium prices, which was always going to happen -- but arguably this dysfunctional market was created to exacerbate the severity of the downturn, in coordination with a buyers strike.



Also relevant:



Also see Daniel Jiminez (28 years at SQM, now at GLN) calling out SMM's attempt to fudge the numbers and downplay bullish fundamentals:




Flooding the market with poor-quality lepidolite: