Banter and General Comments, page-441

Hi James,

First of all, I agree with you that there is currently no reliable indicator for lithium globally. Also agree that the sooner the LME creates one, the less likely the lithium market will be open to manipulation and the better for us all!

However, as Janeo pointed out earlier "after listening to Andrew Left (the Tesla shorter who has recently done an about face) it became apparent how little research a short position can be based on", these guys aren't necessarily making decisions based on detailed analysis and commonsense. Think of ASB - "AKA The bandit" and many others like him. They using a follow the herd mentality. Imagine the water cooler conversations: lithium stocks are the hot stocks to short for 2018 - get onboard or miss out... I doubt they are deep diving into each stocks fundamentals and where they sit respective to peers. They are putting all lithium stocks in the same bucket.

However, I can't imagine that they are in the dark on the day to day lithium price movements. Maybe this is one of a limited few indicators that they are using. I can imagine them sitting there at their trading station with multiple screens staring back at them and on one of those screens, likely amongst all the other commodity price charts, is one with the live spot price of lithium.

Today seems like a case in point. The big US lithium stocks (ALB, SQM, LIT, LTHM) all had a flyer last night. Aus and Chinese big lithium stock leapt out of the blocks and many expected a nice green day. However at around midday, for the majority of the big lithium companies, the tide began to turn. What caused this about face? Noting this happened before the broader index started to turn. My best guess is that the spot price started to turn sour.

Institutional shorters don't care if they are referencing the most accurate or the best indicator of the lithium prices out there (and don't want to pay for it if they don't have to). They are happy to jump on the back of China spot prices if that is what everyone else is looking at. If this is what others are looking at and is enough to move the market / it is good enough for them to trade on. I was curious to see if anyone knows what platform / prices they are referencing for lithium.



Parking this aside, I believe we need to see some meaningful shift in lithium sentiment before we see GXY fly again. Green shoots are appearing: Tesla news, more recognition that MS got it wrong re oversupply and more EV revolution articles hitting the street daily, etc.

Hang in there and GLTA!

AIMO, DYOR