ASX Today, page-42893

You're getting the order wrong. There's no conspiracy of foreign actors attempting to ruin your investment (why would they, when China can't acquire these Australian assets anyway). All that's happening is huge amounts of supply all coming online, and every lithium company contributing to the supply is telling themselves that they're the special ones who can keep dumping product into China at losses and still survive.

The order is this:

1. Excess lithium supply being dumped into China
2. Spot price reacts by falling (why would prices go up when there is endless amounts of supply flooding into China?)
3. Lithium equity valuations react by falling (commodity producers valuations can't hold up against a falling commodity price)
4. Short sellers notice the excess supply and the bearish outlook for the commodity price and open short positions.
5. Repeat from step 1 as more and more mines come online (including KV, which only makes the problem even worse).

The LTR market cap simply reflects the current ~$770/t for SC6 and the complete uncertainty about LTR's unit costs until management finally air the dirty laundry over the next few quarters.