Energy & Commodities
Lithium producers are adding new production capacity to meet booming demand for the critical metal as the world pushes for greener energy. Suppliers of the key mineral have turned quite optimistic this year that global demand for lithium will soar in the coming decades with the increased uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) and battery storage.
Surging demand is set to drive lithium prices higher, lithium producers say in an outlook on the industry that turned decisively bullish this year.
One of the largest lithium suppliers in the world, China’s Ganfeng Lithium, is not ruling out the possibility that lithium prices could recover from the two-year decline and reach the record-highs seen in 2018.
Lithium prices have already surged this year from the lows of 2019-2020. But suppliers believe prices have a lot more room to rise as the push for green energy is overwhelming government agendas worldwide.
“The industry is rapidly growing and we have a very upbeat forecast on lithium consumption,” Ganfeng Lithium’s vice chairman Wang Xiaoshen told Bloomberg in an interview last week.
“I can’t rule out the possibility for lithium prices to bounce back to the 2018 level,” the executive added.
Ganfeng Lithium said earlier this year that it “is optimistic about the long-term development of the global lithium market,” and announced it would expand its production capacity.
“China’s Ganfeng Lithium has announced considerable plans to extend its reach in the lithium supply chain throughout the first half of 2021, remaining one of the most active players in targeting large commitments to build out its production capabilities,” Benchmark Mineral Intelligence said in a report last week.
The company’s vice chairman, however, is not ruling out another dip in lithium prices either, in the interview with Bloomberg. This could happen, he says, if the uptake of EV sales slows down or if major lithium producers bring much more supply faster than expected.
For now, though, it seems that analysts concur that lithium has a bright future, especially considering the net-zero emission commitments from dozens of industrialized nations and blocs, including the United States and the European Union.
Lithium demand for batteries for EVs and battery energy storage is set to jump until 2050—the net-zero watershed moment for most countries.
Scott Koyich of Brisco Capital joins Mike to share how he is playing the short term pull back in commodities, with stock recommendations in oil, copper and gold.
Over the past decade dollar stores have flourished. Today 34,000 of them pepper the American landscape. That’s more locations than CVS (10k), Walgreens (9k), Walmart (4.7k) and Target (1.9k) combined. Click here to read full article.
Households added $13.5 trillion in wealth – the biggest increase in three decades.
The coronavirus pandemic plunged Americans into recession. Instead of emerging poorer, many came out ahead.
U.S. households added $13.5 trillion in wealth last year, according to the Federal Reserve, the biggest increase in records going back three decades. Many Americans of all stripes paid off credit-card debt, saved more and refinanced into cheaper mortgages. That challenged the conventions of previous economic downturns. In 2008, for example, U.S. households lost $8 trillion.
In some ways, the singularity of the Covid-19 recession—and the recovery—shouldn’t surprise. The scope of the pandemic was unprecedented in the modern era. So was the government’s financial response. The U. S. borrowed lent and spent trillions of dollars to keep the economy from plunging further than it did.
These actions were at the center of the unusual nature of both the recession and the recovery. They have also powered much of the stock market’s unexpected boom. Rock-bottom interest rates lured more investors into stocks; workers stuck at home tried their hand at trading and tech giants gained even more ground during the shutdown.
The stock market, in turn, became the driver of the household wealth gain, accounting for nearly half the total increase.
That has produced a lopsided distribution of the wealth gains, since well-off households are more likely to own stocks. More than 70% of the increase in household wealth went to the top 20% of income earners. About a third went to the top 1%. Click here for full article.
(Reuters) – Britain’s financial regulator has said Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, cannot conduct any regulated activity and issued a warning to consumers about the platform, which is coming under growing scrutiny globally.
In a notice dated June 25, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said Binance Markets Ltd, Binance’s only regulated UK entity, “must not, without the prior written consent of the FCA, carry out any regulated activities… with immediate effect”.
It also issued a warning to consumers about Binance Markets and the wider Binance group.
Binance said in a statement that Binance Markets, which it acquired in 2020, was not yet using its regulatory permissions, and that the FCA’s move would not impact services offered on its Binance.com website.
“We take a collaborative approach in working with regulators and we take our compliance obligations very seriously. We are actively keeping abreast of changing policies, rules and laws in this new space,” a spokesperson said.
Binance announced in June last year that it had bought an FCA-regulated entity and would use it to offer cryptocurrency trading services using pounds and euros.
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