Monsters of Rock: Elon Musk sends lithium league flying with...

Monsters of Rock: Elon Musk sends lithium league flying with another dramatic oversimplification

• Elon Musk says “you can’t lose” in the lithium business
• Wave of optimism comes over ASX lithium investors, who back mid-tier lithium co’s to the hilt
• Alumina boss Mike Ferraro says medium outlook for the bulk commodity is strong

On each of these earnings calls Tesla CEO and Master of the Twitterverse Elon Musk says something that makes you wonder if his fortune really is all just dumb luck.

“I would really like to encourage, once again, entrepreneurs to enter the lithium refining business.”

“You can’t lose,” is his latest kernel of genius. “It’s a licence to print money.”

Sure, once you’ve drilled out your resource, gone through years of environmental studies, approvals, convinced the local community who want you to piss off to stick a lithium plant in their back yard, found workers with the requisite to staff the thing and secured financing in a bear market.

The world’s second biggest mining company Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) couldn’t get it done in Serbia and the world’s largest lithium bearing pegmatite is locked up in the DRC is locked up in an ownership dispute instigated by China Inc.

The comment is, like many of his Twitter posts, a dramatic oversimplification.

But lithium chemical and raw material prices are still, evidently and obviously high, generating huge profits for existing miners.

And Musk is still better than most at stimulating unbridled excitement from the meme-loving hordes.

His comments, and news Tesla’s June was its most productive month ever, sent local lithium shares flying.

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