Day to day discussions on S/P, page-6396

I think there are two main reasons why Lithium has been hit so badly in this correction.

Firstly, there are a lot of small and inexperienced investors in the sector (like me) who saw the future and decided to invest. Unfortunately, seeing the future doesn't necessarily mean you're going to make a lot of money quickly; the market is trickier than that. Some weren't lucky enough to have bought in when this was seriously cheap and have had to bail out. I hope they're weren't burnt too badly and jump back in soon. This is a BARGAIN.

Secondly, there has been a bit of a slump in the price of carbonate (as seen in the recent ORE ann); this has spooked people even more. It's worth remembering that ORE is producing a lot of technical grade, not battery grade carbonate. This is being sold to hydroxide converters where it has to compete with spodumene. As per SF@HC's post on this forum the price of hydroxide is stable and it is the price of hydroxide which sets the price of spodumene. In turn it is the demand for batteries that sets the price for hydroxide. IMO the demand for batteries will not just increase, it will explode.

In this Forbes article the founder and CEO of Invision Energy (a large Chinese battery maker that has recently taken over Nissan's battery division) is quoted as saying that he expects battery prices to come down below $100/kwh by 2020 and below $50/kwh by 2025; Musk has made similar statements. Beyond this, he confirmed what everyone investing in lithium believes: that @ $100/kwh, EVs will compete with ICE cars without subsidy and predicted that ICE cars will "disappear overnight" when that happens.

Bottom line is: I'm holding and am looking to buy more when things settle down. Nothing in what has happened recently has caused me to change my mind about lithium. The reasons I invested in this sector in the first place are even stronger today than they were when I was when I first bought in, in 2015. And reassuringly, the companies I invested in are now producing and have an income.