Hi
@All,
maybe a gold / cobalt pit for delecta ?!champagne or selters.
https://newenergynarrative.com/copper-and-nickel-are-being-stockpiled-by-china-europe-and-others-and-no-its-not-because-demand-is-drying-up/
now a few good messages from delecta that it goes forward
Copper and nickel are being stockpiled by China, Europe, and others, and no, it’s not because demand is drying up
Posted by
Cory Groshek on October 19, 2018 8:39 pm
Categories:
NEN Exclusives
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I’ve been reading a lot lately about how
the Chinese are stockpiling copper and how
the Europeans are stockpiling nickel, and about how because of this the people out there who are big on these two metals shouldn’t be quite so bullish. Everywhere I look, I see so-called “analysts” and “experts” saying that the stockpiling of these metals versus, say, the purchasing of them on the open market by end-users such as smelters, cathode makers, and battery producers, is a sign that demand for them is dropping, or at least stagnant.
Well, I’m here to tell you that that is bulls***, and that anyone who would say such a thing not only knows nothing about supply and demand, but also has
zero common sense.
SQUIRRELS DON’T STOCKPILE NUTS FOR NOTHING
You see, when individuals or entities
stockpile things, it’s not because no one wants those things, which is what the “analysts” and “experts” out there (who are probably net-short these metals, by the way) apparently believe or want
you to believe; it’s because those things, assuming they are not
yet in high demand, are expected to
be in high demand
very soon.
Take, for example, bottled water, in the days prior to a hurricane making landfall.
When people run out to raid their local Wal-Mart and grab whatever they can get their hands on, sometimes just hours before the storm hits, with the intent of stockpiling it in their pantries or basements for in the event that the lights go out or they find themselves unable to leave their homes, it’s not because no one else wants or needs that water—it’s because they
know that many other people will
also want or need that water, and that if they wait too long to go get some, then by the time they reach the store, all the water will already be gone.
Now, maybe these people will need this water or maybe they won’t, but in any event, it pays to be prepared, because the last thing anyone wants is to end up stuck in their home or somewhere else during a hurricane, with no food, no water, no medical supplies, etc. Similarly, no one who is involved in or associated with the smelting of copper or nickel, the production of cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries, or the production of said batteries themselves wants to be caught without the raw materials they need, when they need them the most.
And guess what? Right now, those smelters, cathode producers, and battery manufacturers I just mentioned all
need not only copper and nickel, but lithium, cobalt, manganese, and graphite as well, because they
know a storm is coming, albeit it one that promises not hundred-mile-per-hour winds, torrential rain, and billions of dollars in damage, but rather millions of electric vehicles, EV charging stations on countless corners, and billions of dollars’ worth of battery storage projects, all around the world.
METAL PRICES SHOULD BE RISING, NOT FALLING
Having said all that, the prices of copper and nickel should be
rising, rather than
falling (which is what they’ve been doing for a while now), regardless of whether that metal is being bought or stored in warehouses somewhere, but they’re
not, and the reason they’re not has far less to do with the value of or need for these metals than the stupidity or the shortsightedness of the people betting against them.
You see, right now, there are a
lot of people who fancy themselves to very smart who are
net-short copper, nickel, and a number of other metals that are needed for the manufacturing of not only electric vehicles, but the batteries that go into them and the charging stations they depend upon. And if you ask me, these people are a
special kind of stupid, because assuming they read the same news I do every day, and assuming they see how popular both electric vehicles and solar-plus-storage and wind-plus-storage systems are becoming around the world, they
have to be aware that they are on the wrong side of history with their bets.
Either that, or they listen exclusively to the “experts” at investment banks like Morgan Stanley who, in February of 2018,
made the ridiculous call that lithium prices are actually going to plummet in the next few years, as opposed to rise, due to some mythical oversupply situation they’ve envisioned as inevitable due to over-production by South American brine producers (a situation which, I can assure you, will
never come to fruition, if for no other reason than the fact that major producers of
anything will
never produce so much of their product that they cause their own prices to crater—with an exception being OPEC,
which attempted to drive American shale producers out of business a few years ago by intentionally overproducing their own oil).
ONLY AN IDIOT WOULD BET AGAINST BATTERY METALS RIGHT NOW
In any event, anyone who is shorting copper, nickel, or any other battery metal right now is a complete idiot, because the writing has been on every wall in every investment bank and brokerage for
years now—and that writing
clearly states that Big Oil’s days are numbered, the future is electric, and that electric vehicles and battery storage are the next big thing. Accordingly, anyone with half a brain should be able to comprehend that the reason battery metals are being stockpiled has
nothing to do with a lack of demand for them and
everything to do with the fact that in just a few years, our entire lives will
literally depend upon them.
If the entities that need these metals for their batteries or their vehicles (or for selling to their customers who produce these things) were to
not be stockpiling them right now, I’d have no choice but to consider them even dumber than the people are shorting them, because if they were to stupidly wait until the
last minute to get what they need, like many residents of coastal areas do, every time a hurricane comes, then they’d deserve the pain that’s coming to them.
