Many people find it challenging to understand that supply and demand, or expectation vs. reality is the important thing. We've seen people in the AGY discussions showing clear confusion on this topic, such as complete inability to understand how lithium prices can be falling despite increasing lithium demand.
The expectation was for EV adoption to grow at a faster rate than we're seeing. Consequently, lithium production ramped up to cater to this demand. As it turned out, it was easier to ramp up production than expected; methods and technologies were developed quickly, investments into production were huge, and we now see production costs falling and so much production capacity that huge amounts of it are being shut down.
It's a similar concept to good news causing share prices to drop or bad news causing share prices to fall, when the expectation was better or worse.
With so much viable lithium production capacity being mothballed, there is a huge buffer against future high prices; any increase in price will result in production simply being switched back on, as opposed to the scenario we were expecting a few years ago where production was predicted to be working flat out and still falling short of demand. With prolonged low prices and so much competition, there will be high pressure to find new ways to lower cost of production.
AGY Price at posting:
4.1¢ Sentiment: Sell Disclosure: Not Held
