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Green Rush
Listen to Kitco Mining's Green Rush to understand and profit from a once in a century event: the clean energy transition.
Each week host Matt Watson, founder of Precious Metals Commodity Management, will take a deep dive on a metal that will underpin our new electrified world. Green Rush explores the vital role of nickel, copper, lithium, cobalt, silver, platinum group metals, rare earth elements and other metals that power the batteries driving our sustainable future.
Green Rush
Wild swings in critical mineral prices have a root cause: relatively small supply
There is a disconnect between policy makers desire to go green and the amount of critical minerals needed to make it happen, noted Matt Watson, Founder, Precious Metals Commodity Management LLC.
On Thursday Watson recorded an episode of Green Rush with guest Paul Harris, Kitco correspondent.
To compound the problem is that the current supply base for these markets are small, resulting in large price swings.
Lithium is a notable example: the metal hit a staggering $80,000 per tonne at its peak consequently crashing near 90% at the start of this year. Commodities are cyclical, but critical minerals have seen the patterns accelerated due to new markets and elevated demand.
"These are relatively low volume markets," said Harris. "Somebody's going to open a new gigafactory or somebody is going to bring a new mine on stream and that's going to flood the market with surplus capacity, so the price is going to crash—rinse and repeat."
