Spodumene CIF China (FM) Futures +0.51% to $2935, whilst increased BESS & EV demand places further pressure on LT supply
Zimbabwe ban on export of all lithium materials, roughly 10%+ world supply, as high oil prices driving #EV sales
$PLS.ax
$OR3.ax
#Lithium a #Newbullisborn
🚨⚡️LITHIUM BULL MARKET IS JUST GETTING STARTED ⚡️🚨
GFEX lithium futures yesterday smashed through Yuan 200,000/mt 🔥🇨🇳 and sentiment is finally turning after years of pain 📈
Now even Albemarle is forecasting lithium demand hitting 3.6 MILLION LCE tpa by 2030 🚗🔋🏭
But honestly, I still think that’s TOO LOW 👀
My expectation = 4 MILLION LCE tpa by 2030 🌎⚡️
EV growth + grid storage + AI/datacenter energy demand = MASSIVE structural lithium demand wave 🌊🔋
2026 is shaping up for a major supply crunch:
⚠️ Expected lithium deficit: 150,000 LCE tpa
⚠️ Inventories near cycle lows
⚠️ New supply struggling to keep pace
My target:
🎯 GFEX lithium > Yuan 250,000 by end of 2026 📈🔥
If this plays out, lithium producers & developers could see SIGNIFICANT valuation re-ratings 🚀💰
The market still isn’t pricing in:
🔹 Stationary storage explosion
🔹 Faster EV penetration
🔹 Underinvestment in new supply
🔹 Geopolitical supply risks
The next lithium cycle could be far bigger than 2021 🚀🌍🔋
#Lithium #EV #BatteryStorage $LKE $LLKKF #ALB #ELV #LILAC #Argentina #USA #EnergyTransition #CriticalMinerals #BatteryMetals #ElectricVehicles #MiningStocks #Commodities #LithiumStocks #CleanEnergy #Copper #Uranium #Tesla #BYD #BullMarket
Warren Buffett sends his managers one memo every two years.
It contains a single rule that has never changed in 38 years.
"We can afford to lose money, even a lot of money. We cannot afford to lose reputation, even a shred."
Here is why that rule exists.
In late April 1991, John Gutfreund, chairman of Salomon Brothers, learned that an employee had broken Treasury auction rules.
He did not call the Treasury. He did not call the Fed. He did not call the SEC.
He did nothing.
On May 15th, the same employee did it again.
Now Gutfreund and president Tom Strauss were trapped. They had known for weeks and stayed silent. Coming forward now meant admitting they had sat on it.
So they kept quiet.
It nearly destroyed the firm. Eight thousand employees around the world had their futures put in jeopardy because of a single act of omission.
Gutfreund, 30 years on Wall Street and once called the King of Wall Street on the cover of Business Week, was forced out of the securities industry.
All he had to do was pick up the phone and call Jerry Corrigan at the New York Fed.
"We could lose our reputation in 37 minutes," Buffett says. "In fact you can lose it a lot faster than that. You can lose it in five minutes."
That is the only standing instruction he gives every manager at Berkshire.
If you invest $1,000 in a stock, the most you can lose is $1,000.
But if you’re right, you can make $5,000, $10,000, even $20,000.
That’s the edge:
asymmetric returns.
You don’t need to be right often.
You just need a few big winners.
If you invest in 5 companies, one of them going 5–10x can carry your entire portfolio — even if the others fail.
Most investors don’t lose because they’re wrong.
They lose because they sell too early.
They panic on the drop.
They take profits too soon.
When you find a great company, time is your advantage.
Let it work.
🔋🔋LITHIUM & COMMODITY SUPERCYCLE
This webinar is well worth a watch for a helicopter macro economic view.
The lithium valuation gap rock vs brine is telling. The valuation gap between ASX and TSX for lithium players is telling. $GLN $AGY $LIB.V
$LIT $LITP $CPER $COPX $GLD $GDX
🇨🇳 La Chine ne comptait que 3 réacteurs nucléaires en 2000. Elle en exploite déjà 60 en 2026.
🏗️ 36 réacteurs sont en construction et le pays a désormais la capacité d’en construire jusqu’à 50 en même temps.
👷♂️ Il lui faut en moyenne seulement 5 ans pour en mettre un en service, contre 2 à 3 fois plus de temps en France.
🇫🇷 Le Hualong-1, premier réacteur de 3e génération 100 % chinois, est un design très largement inspiré de l’EPR français vendu à la Chine.
🔋🔋BOOM BOOM LITHIUM
Just read this carefully about Texas. The age of renewables providing 24/7 clean reliable power is here. This is the future.
As @JigarShahDC recently said - we should be long lithium.
$LIT $NILI.NE $LIB.NE $ATLX $QTWO.NE $LTH.NE $LIT.V $GLN $AGY
Some random thoughts on some of the latest lithium news as a I sip my morning coffee.
CATL has brought in Chen Zinghe from Zijin as an advisor for it’s mining division. It’s basically CATL saying they are worried that they can’t find enough lithium to meet their massive growth. It’s impressive how fast CATL has grown and you’ve got to applaud the company.
However, I think they are leaving it a bit late as I touched on in an old post of mine (link below). I think they’ve underestimated just how difficult it is to find lithium deposits. Economical lithium deposits are rare and very hard to find. They could go years and find nothing. Zijin doesn’t have a great track record at finding deposits, which is rightly so, they are after all miners, not explorers.
And it’s not just Zijin. What was the last deposit that RIO found? Or BHP? Or FMG? The majors are terrible at exploration, despite the fact they have very large exploration budgets. Exploration isn’t just about having a big budget. A geologist working for a major for a wage in a cookie cutter position is going to be less hungry to find something than a prospector working for themselves for 0 dollars and funding early exploration themselves. Projects are largely found by individuals, they then get passed into exploration companies, which then get taken out by miners.
Basically every (~90%) current lithium mine and the majority of lithium resources (excluding a lot of the Canadian plays) have been mapped and known about for a 100+ years. Most of them were old tin and tantalum mines.
Adover, Kathleen Valley, Pilgangoora, Tabba Tabba, Bikitia, Manono, Greenbushes, Mt Marion, etc. were all discovered over 60 years ago, largely by individual prospectors.
During the last lithium boom, if you wanted to find lithium, you toggled on/georeferenced the occurrences of old tin and tantalum workings, pegged the ground, and explored off that. Those days are done. Those are our current lithium mines and resources.
So 100 + years of mapping and exploring has found the current mines and resources and we are still in a lithium deficit (spod currently at ~$US2400). I agree with @usuallyYJLee , there isn’t enough mapped lithium around to meet his 2030 bull case. Literally all of the Canadian plays would need to come online. So naturally sodium and other battery types will take a portion of the market for this fact alone.
Zijin aren’t explorers. They are miners. Huge difference. A lot of countries don’t understand exploration. The idea of putting capital into what could be seen as a gamble is something they don’t get. They are happy to pay a premium for a nice resource, but the idea of spending a fraction of what they pay for a resource on a “gamble” seems silly.
I personally think Zijin (and any major) will struggle to find more greenfields lithium. All the easy low hanging fruit deposits are gone. It’s now largely a drilling under cover game. Once you’ve dusted your first 4-5million on drilling, you start to think maybe it’s just easier to buy these things for a premium. Problem is there aren't really many options available. Exploration for lithium has been on a halt for several years and despite spod at a very healthy price of ~US$2400, it still hasn't picked up yet. Better get exploring soon or big trouble.
To finish, on a side note, $PLS just hit an all time high! Cheers for reading!
WOW 🚨 A new Data Center is being built in the Texas Panhandle that will use more power than ALL THE HOMES IN TEXAS COMBINED TIMES 2
- It’ll be the largest data center in the world, at 18 million square feet
- The site will span over 6,000+ acres (9 square miles)
- It will use up to 11 GW
- The on-site generation is described as producing more electricity than 15 states use at their peak
🔋🔋OIL SUPPLY SHOCK
There is a dramatic increase worldwide for industrial silver usage.
The rise in oil prices filters through directly to the cost of driving and through higher gas prices the cost of electricity production.
To insulate against this the best option is to accelerate the deployment of solar PV and BESS. This in turn requires more silver and more lithium.
The fundamentals for silver are stronger than ever. It’s simply not filtered through the system yet but it will.
$SIL $SILJ $SLV $LIT
When it comes to why we might not see broadly cheaper vehicles from sodium within the next decade (say, by 2036), it’s all about lithium’s head start in supply chains, manufacturing maturity, and ongoing cost reductions—making it hard for sodium to deliver a net price win for most EVs.
Here’s the breakdown:
• Lithium’s massive scale advantage: Lithium-ion (especially LFP) supply chains are hyper-mature—terawatt-hour factory capacity already online globally, with overcapacity in China driving fierce competition and price crashes. We’re talking 1.6 TWh demand in 2025 alone, vs sodium’s tiny 10 GWh market this year, ramping to ~292 GWh by 2034 (impressive 45% CAGR, but still dwarfed by lithium). This scale lets lithium makers spread fixed costs thin, recycle materials efficiently, and optimize everything from mining (brine/DLE tech improving) to cell assembly. Sodium? It’s just starting—pilot lines in 2026, full chains still building, meaning higher upfront costs and slower learning curves.
• Current and projected costs: Sodium’s raw materials are dirt cheap ($0.05/kg for sodium vs $15/kg lithium), potentially 20-40% lower long-term. But today, sodium-ion packs are at ~$59-100/kWh—similar or even higher than LFP’s record lows ($50-70/kWh packs, $36/kWh cells in spots). Why? Manufacturing isn’t optimized yet—sodium cells need tweaks to existing lines, but lithium’s ecosystem (suppliers, equipment, recycling) is plug-and-play. Projections show lithium LFP packs dropping another 10-20% in 2026 to ~$56-86/kWh, heading toward $55-65/kWh by 2035. Sodium might hit $40-50/kWh with scale, but lithium’s momentum (plus emerging solid-state boosting density/performance) keeps closing the gap—recent lithium price drops (>70% on carbonate) have already weakened sodium’s economic case.
• Energy density and total vehicle costs: Sodium’s ~160-175 Wh/kg vs LFP’s 190-205+ means you need bigger/heavier batteries for the same range—adding weight, reducing efficiency, and hiking non-battery costs (chassis, cooling, etc.). For a 500km EV, that could offset material savings, making the whole vehicle not much cheaper (or even pricier in premium segments). Lithium’s density edge persists, and with solid-state lithium hitting 300-500 Wh/kg in pilots (commercial ramp 2027-2030), it widens—enabling lighter, longer-range EVs without cost spikes.
• Timeline to impact: Sodium enters mass prod in niches (short-range urban EVs, cold-climate fleets—handy for cold winters!), but broad EV adoption needs 5-10 years for chains to mature and costs to drop below lithium’s trajectory.
The reindustrialization of America is underway and AI is a big driver. @CrusoeAI operates 5 factories throughout CO, OK, and LA to manufacture electrical components for AI data center builds. We employ about 500 FTE in factories today, up from less than 100 a few years ago.