Running discussion on SP, page-5644

There was a lot of enthusiasm for developing Simandou on the part of RIO and the Chinese when the iron ore price was trading at $180/t, with several transport infrastructure solutions being flagged and studied, not so at the current iron ore price point which is roughly one third of what it was at its high.

The problem with the current batch of lithium speculators is that they can’t fathom a situation where the price of lithium concentrate falls to be a third of its current value. It’s just another commodity subject to similar pressures like all other commodities. In fact it doesn’t even have a spot market and the downstream producers of LCE are basically cartels with their own interests in mind. They care very little about the fate of Australian equity investors. The price of lithium concentrate could easily fall to a third of its current price in response to any number of unforeseen market disrupters, it’s just that some people can only see the blue sky in this space. Good luck but IMO the top is well and truly in for hard rock lithium, the rest will just be a fight against the tide.Esh