rare earth sentiment tone for friday, page-10

Nothing wrong with wanting to be confident, and I'm basically bullish LT, but we need to see some substance behind these headlines.

China stuffed up, they've had a good think about it, with the strength of their control economy they've taken action which is currently being rolled out. I'll suggest they've learnt from their mistakes and will be effective but let's not forget the other side of the propaganda war, "6000 leagues under the sea", Japan. Still powerful trading partner who's obvious collusion with smugglers needs to be blocked by China.

Make no mistake, we're bit players in the age old tussle between the two, with RE characteristics, lol.

Sumitomo being busted with 4kt smuggled RE now starts to make more sense of the official export numbers to Japan, circa 3/4kt from memory, v official import numbers 9kt v MTC's 2012 forecast of 21kt.

Japanese demand could well be much stronger than official numbers suggests and success in blocking the smuggling would reveal true demand, and most bring the Sojitz deal back into play.

But we need confirmed action, not propaganda.