This may seem like it is unrelated to us, but Lithium price just...

This may seem like it is unrelated to us, but Lithium price just shot-up almost 10% in 1 day:


Even poor 'ol Nickel is having a great run, up almost 8% for the year.
Taken together, this is like 2016 - 2018 all over again. Any commodity that had a big "exposure" (percentage of total usage) to the battery industry did well. The more exposure, the greater the rewards. Lithium did extremely well... they don't call 'em Lithium ion batteries for nothing!
Nickel only did OK because nickel use in batteries was only a small portion of total nickel use in all industries (steel making takes up the bulk of nickel supply).
And of course, our beloved Cobalt. I couldn't find older price charts for Lithium to show a comparison, but from my memory the Cobalt price both mirrored and amplified the price movements of Lithium, with a slight lag.
If anyone is looking for a reason for this sudden change of fortune in this sector, my opinion is that it is driven by factors on both the supply and demand side.
On the demand side, we have the main factor being the 2021 EU emissions legislations (huge tax on new ICE cars), along with China stockpiling, and all the Tesla stock price news surely puts it (and its products!) under the spotlight. All of these factors increase demand.
On the supply side, we've got the pandemic restricting any sudden ramp-up in supply, plus the 2019 slump in the sector having already caused a big reduction in supply.
It's a great time to be in battery materials!