The problem is that nobody mines cobalt directly. It's a byproduct of mining Copper and Nichel. So to mine Cobalt you'd have to develop a Ni or Cu mine, which is a $$ multi-billion project and wouldn't happen just for the Cobalt. That would turn Ni and Cu into byproducts of Co. So the Nick French video interview may very well have some truth to it. I suspect it will be more like a "hill" than a "cliff" but nobody knows.
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It seems remarkably hard to tell *which* companies will get financed and make their cobalt mines work. If you can come up with a basket which covers all the possibilities, that might make sense. I can't.
ValueAnalyst
Closed
Questions that need answers:
- Can Tesla drop Cobalt from its battery chemistry?
- Can Tesla buy Cobalt reserves and insource mining? (EM has done crazier things)
- Does Cobalt's price currently incorporate speculation?
- How much new supply will the recent price surge bring about?
- How will Cobalt demand for other uses evolve?
- Do the companies own their reserves?
- What are the reserve sizes of each company?
- Which companies have proven managements? This will play a role in getting financing.
- Which companies have durable competitive advantages? Any?
- Many questions that I haven't thought of, yet...
I took a small gamble on Ecobalt solutions http://www.ecobalt.com/ . Basically I liked the blurb on their website and the Idaho based location of their cobalt project. Pretty much a coin toss on my part but so far it's working out.
Related:
Auto, battery makers investing in small Canadian cobalt, lithium miners
Fortune Minerals has a picture of a Model S on their website, so clearly investment potential there Fortune Minerals Limited - Home
Auto, battery makers investing in small Canadian cobalt, lithium miners
Fortune Minerals has a picture of a Model S on their website, so clearly investment potential there Fortune Minerals Limited - Home
It's up nearly 100% since I bought in February, but a large chunk of that is the last week or two.
Tesla has determined the best chemistry for automotive use requires cobalt. There are a lot of chemistries, and each has its upsides and downsides. This is a few years old, but it covers the basics quite well:
Types of Lithium-ion Batteries – Battery University
Solid state batteries are coming within the next ten years and I don't know what materials will be necessary, but they could require different materials completely. Cobalt may become obsolete for car batteries.
I'm sure Tesla has some ideas what the long term materials will need to be and they are probably giving consideration on how to obtain them.
Glencore in talks with Tesla and others.
Glencore, Apollo Bid for Rio Tinto's $1.5 Billion Coal Assets
Probably not for selling that coal, to link together the above headlines..... 
Hmm, somehow I picked up the wrong link. Let's try that again.
*Edit, nope, that failed as well. 3rd times the charm?
Glencore targets key role in electric vehicle revolution
*Edit, nope, that failed as well. 3rd times the charm?
Glencore targets key role in electric vehicle revolution
i gave JP a somewhat left handed compliment, as his advice did help me, I use him as a datapoint for contrarian investing (Do the opposite) but sent him a nice thankyou. however, i seem to be on permanent moderation and rarely get comments published. He did oblquiely suggest diversication, so i returned the ??comliment??
"""...
@author.
Thank you for alerting me to other metals and resources related to Li batteries.
you pointed out the value of diversication and made me do so and make my own ETF.
I got ALB, ALTAF, CMCLF, ECORF, GALXF, LACDF, NILSY, NNOMF, NE, NVDA, OROCF, PKG, PLLLY, PILBF, PEMIF, TSLA, perhaps soon, ARAFF, ARRRF, CRECF, GLCNF, KATFF, LYSDD, SQM, SYAFF depending
I took your advice to heart, that goes, more or less
"You can be completely right about a stock, but off so far in time that you lose everything, either early or late" so i thank you for your prescience for that.
(I disagree somewhat about Cobalt, but have a -->small flier in that)
I'm happy to give you a click for the penny, every one helps these days.
(My Tesla is not up as much overall as I took some quite tidy profits to subsidize my diversications, esp NVDA and ALB) have a _very_ tasty vacation in Kaua'i (visit MonkeyPodJam bakery and try the baklava, MY recipe btw, or the mango pinapple jams and visit the Tesla PV array near Lihue in case you ever get to the tropics)
Hope all your investments are doing well, old age and fixed income etc make it harder
happy investing
Aloha
Mahalo
..""
MOD: Moved my own post from the "Petersen Nonsense" thread to this more appropriate location
CopperNickelMine - CNM - currently is producing 10^6 tpy Cu at an average grade of 0.1% from its reserves of 30mm t, and an associated 10^4tpy Ni. Ni is sufficiently important to the top & bottomline results for CNM that, in that CNM has identified Zone C as having extractable Ni at a 20% higher grade than is present in Zones A, B, D and E that over the past two years it has been preferentially exploiting Zone C. As such - its mine production plan having been altered to snag that higher-grade Ni, Ni therefore is by definition a coproduct.
On the other hand, INCIDENTAL to this mine extraction profile has been the capturable amount of 10^3 tpy of Co. Neat! Free stuff! That is, CNM is not altering its mine production profile or its concentration process to produce more...or less...cobalt - it just "falls out". Standard mining practice, by the way, is then simply to take the revenue gained from selling that Co concentrate to a cobalt refiner and use it to lower the perceived cost of production of Cu and Ni.
NOW......let's say there is a demand-driven rise in the price of Co. Let's double the price. What will happen?
CNM is going to look at its lowered cost of Cu & Ni production that will be accruing from that higher-value Co and say "Gollygeewillikers! We can increase this year's mine output by ten percent AND increase profits by twelve percent! Pennies from heaven!" - all as a result of the juicier squirt that Co has provided. AND.... that will raise the supply of Co on the market as well.
This process continues until the higher received price of Co is such that CNM realizes that the vein of Co-rich ore lying off in the periphery of Zone F, hitherto not appropriate to extract in the mine's overall development profile, now makes sense to exploit. When this occurs, Co has graduated from being a byproduct into a coproduct. More importantly for the resource community, the supply to the market of Co has risen NOT because there are so-called cobalt mines coming into production, but because the CuNi production changes as f(pCo) have brought the increased supply to market.
Gollygeewillikers indeed.
A full price sensitivity analysis is needed, on a per-mine basis, to calculate what the mining world's response will be to changes in Co price, and that has to include the feedback effects of greater Co supply to those Co prices. Regardless, in all circumstances, even whilst remaining "true" byproduct, rather than needing to graduate to coproduct, Co supply does respond to Co price changes.
An important way to look at Co supply is to better understand the effects of byproducts in the mining industry. I haven't on hand any real mine data, so this will have to be only a gedankenexperiment, but the real-world applicability is sound. As follows:
CopperNickelMine - CNM - currently is producing 10^6 tpy Cu at an average grade of 0.1% from its reserves of 30mm t, and an associated 10^4tpy Ni. Ni is sufficiently important to the top & bottomline results for CNM that, in that CNM has identified Zone C as having extractable Ni at a 20% higher grade than is present in Zones A, B, D and E that over the past two years it has been preferentially exploiting Zone C. As such - its mine production plan having been altered to snag that higher-grade Ni, Ni therefore is by definition a coproduct.
On the other hand, INCIDENTAL to this mine extraction profile has been the capturable amount of 10^3 tpy of Co. Neat! Free stuff! That is, CNM is not altering its mine production profile or its concentration process to produce more...or less...cobalt - it just "falls out". Standard mining practice, by the way, is then simply to take the revenue gained from selling that Co concentrate to a cobalt refiner and use it to lower the perceived cost of production of Cu and Ni.
NOW......let's say there is a demand-driven rise in the price of Co. Let's double the price. What will happen?
CNM is going to look at its lowered cost of Cu & Ni production that will be accruing from that higher-value Co and say "Gollygeewillikers! We can increase this year's mine output by ten percent AND increase profits by twelve percent! Pennies from heaven!" - all as a result of the juicier squirt that Co has provided. AND.... that will raise the supply of Co on the market as well.
This process continues until the higher received price of Co is such that CNM realizes that the vein of Co-rich ore lying off in the periphery of Zone F, hitherto not appropriate to extract in the mine's overall development profile, now makes sense to exploit. When this occurs, Co has graduated from being a byproduct into a coproduct. More importantly for the resource community, the supply to the market of Co has risen NOT because there are so-called cobalt mines coming into production, but because the CuNi production changes as f(pCo) have brought the increased supply to market.
Gollygeewillikers indeed.
A full price sensitivity analysis is needed, on a per-mine basis, to calculate what the mining world's response will be to changes in Co price, and that has to include the feedback effects of greater Co supply to those Co prices. Regardless, in all circumstances, even whilst remaining "true" byproduct, rather than needing to graduate to coproduct, Co supply does respond to Co price changes.
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A heads-up: please note you are going to want to change that to the new issue: LACDD. This is a function of the recent 1:5 split.
===> But q.v. my 8 Jan update<===
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More cobalt stuff:
Proactive Investors China - The web's leading portal for China stocks - Carawine Resources identifies cobalt-manganese potential in Pilbara
Breaking News: First Cobalt Intersects Three Cobalt Veins at Keeley - Financial Buzz
Power Americas Provides Update on 2017 Exploration Program on the Kittson Cobalt Project | Geology for Investors
Ardea Resources Limited
Proactive Investors China - The web's leading portal for China stocks - Carawine Resources identifies cobalt-manganese potential in Pilbara
Breaking News: First Cobalt Intersects Three Cobalt Veins at Keeley - Financial Buzz
Power Americas Provides Update on 2017 Exploration Program on the Kittson Cobalt Project | Geology for Investors
Ardea Resources Limited
Or Tesla may be planning on expanding into South America. They do expand into at least a few new countries every year.
RobStark
Well-Known Member
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