Agreed on that. But I chose YAL over WHC precisely for that....

Agreed on that. But I chose YAL over WHC precisely for that. Chinese ownership wasn't bad, until that offer they made. Many of the loans are provided by Yankuang energy. I chose YAL because it was more leveraged than WHC, generally meaning magnifying its return during boom time.

Illiquid stock could be good, when people are rushing to buy, but bad when people try to exit.

The spread between 5500CV and 6000CV coal wasn't this huge back months ago, now it's almost a $200, or 100% spread. Whether the spread will close, I don't know. Just read some report China is generating record amount of electricity through coal, that will be burning record amount of coal, since their high CV coal inventory is depleting and burning low grade coal.

I'd think both are good stocks to hold, especially compare to other ASX stocks. Look at Lithium stock AKE, generating $189m revenue per quarter and still has higher market cap than WHC, where WHC generate $1.4b cash, not revenue.

Just imagine what will happen to the coal price if China suddenly starts to import Australian coal again.