Goldman and opinions, page-217

Indeed but then MS have been doing stuff like this repeatedly and when ever they get caught doing something and fined, they just pay the fine which is just their cost of doing their business. They have zero incentive to change and likely grease the wheels of politics so much that there will never be any real pressure for change.

Three things hit that day all at once
1. MS downgrade report
2. BYD buying mines in Africa
3. Argentina pegging a value to carbonate for exporters

The only one that had any bite IMO was (1) because (2) is easy to check and verify and (3) is pretty irrelevant. Models are more difficult to dispel and ultimately, only time does so. However, one can look at the assumption in those models to judge the quality of the model. The MS report has big unrealistic assumptions.

Firstly, they claim that although battery demand growth was 100% last year and 67% so far this year, its going to suddenly drop down to 28% in 2023 and then down to 22% for 2024 and 2025. This needs a robust explanation but MS doesn't provide one.

Secondly, they claim that supply is going to get 300kt+ LCE from mostly Chinese non-spodumene sources in the next 3 years. Experts have disagreed with this view strongly.

So you make a model with unrealistically low battery growth and unrealistically high supply and you get oversupply. It's just not convincing. Battery growth is driven mostly by EV sales these days, so keeping an eye on those will test this thesis.