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If you want evidence that lithium stocks are having a pretty stellar start to Week 33, just cast your eyes around the traps. As of this morning:
- MinRes (MIN) is up +10.52% to $37.55/sh
- Pilbara Minerals (PLS) is up +16.3% to $2.24/sh
- Liontown (LTR) is up +22% to $1.03/sh
The usual offenders, sure – but what’s going on?
Probably surprising nobody (especially given our HotCopper feature image gives it away), the answer is coming from China. Lithium and EV battery giant CATL has, per reports, made the move to shut down one of its lithium mines for three months, and that has lit a fire under the market.
Supposedly, that’s because CATL accidentally let a key permit expire. Woops. At any rate, production from that one mine, called Jianxiawo, is likely to vanish for the next 90 days.
While the market down under is happy to see any kind of reprieve for the Aussie lithium majors – PLS the shining jewel of that crown; followed by players like MIN and Rinehart-backed LTR – whether or not the Jianxiawo mine shutdown poses fundamental supply concerns for the lithium market broadly remains to be seen.
Then again, the Jianxiawo lithium mine is the largest of its kind in China’s Yichun region, which is widely accepted as a lithium mining hotspot.
However, despite having the size to boast being ‘Texas Big,’ (a term I have just used to describe it, and not one CATL has used,) the mine only supplies around 3% of the global lithium supply.
So are traders in PLS, LTR, and MIN getting a big excited? Probably, yes.
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Of course, as long as you can sell high, that doesn’t really matter. Tomorrow is the distant future; this morning, the ancient past.
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