The rare earth market has been a wild one last 6 months, I’ve been doing some speculative plays primarily with Molycorp and other players. Lots of investment going on in response to China moves, first restricting exports to Japan, now cracking down on illegal dirty mines. China is a pollution basket case if you haven’t been recently.
Good to have downside protection, as with all the investment in mining in places like Brazil, will there be a rare earth glut in a year or two? I wonder what impact there will be impact of electric vehicle growth will be certain rare earth commodities. They say not all rare earths are created equal. I’m hearing China industrial policy may go big on electric and plug in electric vehicles. By mandating certain percentage of all vehicles to be electric, say 25%, they can leapfrog the West and Japan with clean energy vehicles and simultaneously help clean up their pathetically polluted cities. Last i heard China controls more that 95% rare earth production. The Japanese have been frantically scrambing to lock up alternative suppliers. More cars have been sold in China that US last 2 years now. Some interesting trends going on impacting the rare earth commodity market.
