Does trading get halted on OTC markets? VULNF seems as if it's not trading since 11:15, bid is at $5.60 and ask is $7.41, last trade is listed at $7.00 but the chart is showing $5.50 at Yahoo and Marketwatch.
PLL also down 5%, seems the resources are getting a bit hammered today. Maybe just some profit taking or rebalancing given the big runup the last week?
It must be OTC market weirdness, I had a buy order in for VULNF at $7.20 just to see if it was trading, and it got filled at $5.80 but the charts never showed it going below $7 in that time period. Win for me I guess.
PLL up 12% already today. I can't seem to find any news on why they have been taking off so much. I've noticed on low volume traded stocks that my buy orders can really jump around price wise.
Novonix up another 32% today, Vulcan got hit again after the open with a big drop then some recovery, still down 23% for the day. Certainly looks like some manipulation going on.
LLKKF up ~123% today... Novonix up another 30% today... And ABML up 28%... No idea why on any of them.
Executive Summary and additional thoughts. The video concludes using water and salt to extract Lithium form the clay is likely to be possible via a number of methods.. Basically Chlorine bonds more strongly with Lithium than Sodium, so Sodium takes the place of Lithium in the clay. so Li(in clay) + NaCl = Na(in clay) + LiCl. LiCl dissolves in water via via an exothermic process, so the process of dissolving in water emits some useful energy. Essentially LiCl + H2O = Li+(aq) + Cl- (aq) This is likely to be the process Tesla is using, from the Battery Day presentation is is very likely they got at least this far in the lab,. Additional Speculative thoughts. We need to keep in mind the LI+Cl- solution is start part of the mess of the clay along with a lot of other stuff. From the video we know miners hate clay, because it is fine and hard to separate economically via filtration. Tesla wants pure LiOH not LiCl mixed in with a lot of other stuff. I have seen the equation :- LiCl + H2O = LiOH + (I assume Cl) + H But I can't find any definite documentation on this, I assume it isn't a simple checimical reaction, but it is a transformation that can happen. Like magnesium Lithium reacts directly with water:- Li + H2O = LiOH + H Any hydrogen emitted can be used as an industrial heat source - 2 H + O = H2O So one possibly that occurred to me is Tesla might simply plate pure Lithium metal an Nevada via:- Electrowinning - Wikipedia That pure Lithium metal could be mixed with water at Austin, for the back end of the process. 50% of the water is consumed in the back end cycle. Lithium plating is not that dissimilar to battery technology, if a separator membrane allows only Lithium Ions and some Sodium ions to pass through a membrane and plate, then Tesla could use that to retrieve the material they want from the mess of the clay. Exceptionally high purity is a requirement, at Austin Hydrogen can be used to provide industrial heat to help separate products. Lithium Hydroxide Melting Point:- 462 Celsius, Boiling Point 924 Celsius Sodium Hydroxide Melting point - 318 Celsius, Boiling Point 1,388 If all we had was a mixture of Lithium Hydroxide and Sodium Hydroxide, it is likely that industrial heat would be an efficient way of separating them, hopefully by simply melting the Sodium Hydroxide. Sodium Hydroxide is useful in batteries, so maybe this step of separating it out is not essential, or does not need to be overly precise. The point of my speculation isn't that this is the process Tesla will definitely use, just that a few different pathways exist. So my hunch is Tesla probably has a lab version of an end-to-end process starting with the Lithium Clays and ending up with pure enough Lithium Hydroxide.
Most of the conversation in this thread is focused around the miners. Any thoughts though about the future value of the commodities themselves and whether there's a valid thesis to invest in their associated etf/etns? I was specifically looking at nickel and JJN. Good long term investment? Or problematic and less certain given supply/demand complexities, structural risks associated with these kinds of etfs and etns, etc?
Video on Tesla raw materials:- This shows why Tesla's ability to extract Lithium is important and why Tesla is going to be proactive about obtaining Nickel. IMO the future for graphite is a question, but we are talking Silicon loaded graphite Anodes, not replacement of Graphite. Investment in commodity raw materials companies is tricky, prices are affected by the balance of supply and demand, and better prices tend to advance plans bring more supply on board. But typically it can take 5 years to ramp up additional supply. So I guess the best bet is having a handle on when new supply is coming on line industry-wide, and the likely demand...
Not sure if it's an amplification of the general market, but ABML cratered this morning. Down 20% and still dropping.
It's recovered some, only down 12% now, while LLKKF and TLGRF are up 4 and 5% respectively. Seems like a targeted push down for ABML, volume spike near the low buying back in.
ALB, one of top 3 Lithium miners in the world, reported good results and outlook, mainly due to EV’s. However, they also produce Bromine for fire retardant, and Catalysts for refineries (presumably mainly oil). However they said catalysts will be down this year even though demand coming back due to a customer “deselecting” ALB due to their public support for EVs. So oil companies doing everything they can to torpedo EV revolution. I say oil industry!