Sunday, October 31, 2010

More on the sharp elbows (or is it dragon's teeth?) of Chinese mercantilism.


"The Looming Rare Earths Train Wreck."

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Quote: [T]he relative shortage of lanthanides and relative abundance of oil has left Jack Lifton, a longtime metals analyst, shaking his head. Lifton asks the obvious question “Why convert our economy so that we are dependent on a set of commodities over which we have no control?”

The answer seems only too obvious: It is easier to collapse the US economy with a rare earths embargo.

MALTHUS

HonourableMeans said...

The situation sucks for the US economy. But as individuals, there is a way to profit from this embargo.

That is through a brand spankin' new ETF for sale, which I bought on Friday. Symbol is REMX, owned by Van Eck, linked to Austrian economics fellow traveller Jim Rogers. It consists of several Chinese rare earth producers, Canadian, and Australian.

I also own some Thompson Creek metals, symbol TC. This is a Canadian owned company with its main mining of Molybdenum in Colorado.

REMX holdings as per their website from this am:

Download Full Holdings
As of October 29, 2010 |TOTAL CONSTITUENTS: 25
Holding
Shares
Market Value (USD)
% of net assets
Iluka Resources Ltd ILU AU 275,374 1,823,835
8.12%
Lynas Corp Ltd LYC AU 1,210,418 1,745,706
7.77%
Thompson Creek Metals Co Inc TCM CN 120,230 1,450,889
6.46%
Titanium Metals Corp TIE US 70,136 1,378,874
6.14%
China Molybdenum Co Ltd 3993 HK 1,386,000 1,333,956
5.94%
RTI International Metals Inc RTI US 39,182 1,218,560
5.43%
China Rare Earth Holdings Ltd 769 HK 2,068,000 1,130,477
5.03%
OSAKA Titanium Technologies Co 5726 JP 24,200 1,128,997
5.03%
Molycorp Inc MCP US 31,812 1,126,145
5.01%
Neo Material Technologies Inc NEM CN 187,616 1,091,477
4.86%

Defender said...

First "green" ammo for the military -- China is the No. 1 producer of copper, tungsten and bismuth -- now this.

The EPA is mandating a 20% reduction in long-haul tractor-trailer emissions by 2016, I think it was.
That's gonna cost truck manufacturers, and the cost will be passed on. EVERYTHING moves by truck at some point. What a great idea, on the verge of Great Depression II.
The big pollution-reducing public transportation push by the Odministration? An official wants DC Metro subway passengers scanned for explosive residue as well as wanded and patted down.
Green is the new Red.

III more than them said...

Green is the new RED.

I think that nails it.

TJP said...

It only looks this way now because we waste so much. It's relatively easy to pull the neodymium magnets from hard disk drives, and we discard millions of those a year. I foresee future business opportunities.

When environmentalists say "recycle", they mean recycle in other countries, because it's such a filthy, energy-consuming process.

As far as our tariff war with China: "Protectionism" is a competition where two countries shoot themselves in the foot until both of them lose.

Anonymous said...

India has lots of monazite (one of the main rare earth bearing minerals).

If the price of rare earths goes up, there are lots of beaches to look at for a quick, shovel and dumper, or dredger mining job. The concentration is easy and cheap to set up too, just some spiral separators and some shaking tables.

I'd love a couple years of beach sampling work, that's if the tanatalum price doesn't go higher before that...

The fatnbaldy one