Just an FYI folks in case you missed this story.

ASX rides high as Elon Musk praises nickel

“So the actual thing that matters is the cathode. Our long-range vehicles use a nickel-based cathode, some people think it’s a cobalt-based cathode, no, cobalt is used in phones and laptops, we use nickel because it’s higher energy density for our long-range vehicles," - Elon Musk.

It was a good morning for the Australian stock market.

The S&P/ASX200 is up today at the time of writing, gaining 55.10 points or 0.76% to 7,311.80.

Over the last five days, the index has gained 1.76% and is currently 4.21% from its 52-week high.

The top-performing stocks on the S&P/ASX200 are Chalice Mining Ltd (ASX:CHN, OTCQB:CGMLF) up 4.97% continuing its form from yesterday and Magellan Financial Group Ltd (ASX:MFG) up 4.3%.

News of interest

Tesla held its annual meeting this morning, which is usually good news for resource sectors.

Founder Elon Musk has once again put nickel front and centre, while pointing out that there was no shortage of lithium supply. It all bodes well for a ramp-up of electric vehicles in the near future.

“Lithium is extremely plentiful. It’s one of the most plentiful things on earth, it’s not rare at all,” he said.

“There’s lithium everywhere, so that’s not an issue. Also, lithium is maybe only one or two per cent of the [battery] cell.

“So the actual thing that matters is the cathode. Our long-range vehicles use a nickel-based cathode, some people think it’s a cobalt-based cathode, no, cobalt is used in phones and laptops, we use nickel because it’s higher energy density for our long-range vehicles.

“But for standard range vehicles and for stationary storage, I think all of that will move to iron-based cathodes.

“Iron is also extremely plentiful, nickel is not rare, but there’s 10 to 100 times more iron than there’s nickel ... I think the vast majority of batteries in the future will be iron-based, so I do not see any shortages.”

Bring on the lithium and nickel players.