LME price is not the real market price Guys. you know that...

LME price is not the real market price Guys. you know that already. 90% ++ of the market in Co goes from miners straight to battery manufacturers or other end users in via long term supply contracts B to B . These deals -or those that are actually reported to fast markets -Metals bulletin (and they all don't have to be - Indeed many people only report the cheaper ones) are usually at much higher prices than LME which tends to be a speculators markets with almost no volume. Its also a delivery market so when you buy a paper contract there for example seller can deliver you any old crap cobalt and you are obliged to accept it. most serious players never even use that market.

don't get too hung up on the LME price.

I'm absolutely not a conspiracy theorist like many on this blog, but I am of the opinion that China is still trying to manipulate the cobalt price to keep it low and from what I'm told LME is one of the instruments it uses.

Why is it manipulating the price to keep it down- cos its the leader in the battery metals EV car space and has invested heavily to obtain that position. so it wants to ensure that:
1.global EV car adoption keeps going apace.And batteries get cheaper and cheaper untill at parity with ICE cars.
2. to limit funding into research into new bettery technologies to ensure that lithium/cobalt battery usage is more widespread and in a much more established and less assailable position.
3.To make its needed cobalt supplies cheaper.
4. to stop the new exploration companies getting funded (unless bought by Chinese)
5. to try to get the other smaller non-government International backed mines and explorers to go broke or unviable so China can buy them cheaper.

So far their strategy is working very well becuase they are very smart in business- much smarter than us mere whitemen or African politicians.

But eventually IMO low prices will have to break up -(if demand keeps growing apace) but by then they will have the world CO supply and battery supply esstenially by the cojones and will be happy to let it rise.

unfortunately we Co explorer shareholders are now hostage to this process.