Guy Le Page RM Corporate Finance Gold is emerging from the shadows of upstart lithium, helped by a rally to a six-week high last week and an all-time Australian high. You can thank the liquidity crisis in the banking sector, and a bit of US Fed action for that. So if you’re new to gold, having spent the past two years chasing “transition” moonshots, where’s a good place to make lithium-like gains over the next year or two? Well, not in gold. But there’s fun to be had in say, something up and coming in a historically high-producing region, getting the drills ready, has a bunch of solid explorat ..read more

Highly-priced newswires would have you believe that the lithium market is kaput because the spot price in China has come off some 50% since November. But Garimpeiro wouldn’t be abandoning the sector on the strength of the “50% lithium price crash’’ horror stories. While the Chinese domestic spot price for lithium carbonate has come back big time, at about $US43,000/t (prices under contract are higher, and spot prices elsewhere in Asia are higher), it remains a fantastic price compared with production costs of $US5,000t-$US15,000t, depending on the process route. So margins are still nice and f ..read more

After getting blindsided by a brand spanking new takedown from US short-seller Hindenburg Research – which didn’t blindside Stockhead’s Eddy Sunarto – the ASX-listed shares of Block Inc (ASX:SQ2) – that’s the payments firm which ate local BNPL leader Afterpay and is chaired by Jack Dorsey – crashed as much as 20% on Friday.   Block co-founder @jack Dorsey’s net worth tumbles $526mln. Was hammered after Hindenburg Research’s latest report, which alleged the payments company ignored widespread fraud. https://t.co/iiTDojrAVI pic.twitter.com/po0ihOqg2T — Holger Zschaepitz (@Schuldensuehner ..read more

There’s a LOT going on in crypto right now. Maybe we need to hire an AI journo to cover it all – at least it won’t eat all the biscuits. Until that happens, we’ll keep rounding up occasional expert takes for state-of-play articles such as this one. While banks crumble and uncertainty swirls through financial markets, Bitcoin and crypto assets more broadly have somehow managed to keep ticking up so far this year – in a kind of one-and-a-half steps back, two-steps forward fashion. Why? Well, it’s a decent question, and we posited it, along with a few others, to a diverse group of global crypto f ..read more

The EU has just published a proposal to clamp down on food label greenwashing For the first time, the new directive will make green claims reliable, comparable and responsible Stockhead reached out to Tim York, CEO of v2food   Overnight, the European Commission published new measures designed to crack down on greenwashing in food product labels and advertisements. The highly anticipated “Green Claims Directive” will be forcing food companies in the EU to be more transparent about the climate impacts of their products, and how they should communicate their green claims. The new proposal ..read more

ASX 200 benchmark ends up pretty much where we started on Monday, -0.15%. XEC Emerging Companies index climbed 0.23% out of sheer spite and bloody-mindedness. Gold was where it was at, as Besra’s 300% barnstormer quite clearly showed.   It’s 4:00pm-ish Friday arvo, and I can hear the low rumbling sound of millions of Aussie feet hurtling towards the nearest pub, to drink the memory of this mercurial market week away and, perchance, find a willing participant or two with whom to engage in coitus. Or, if you’re like me (I don’t drink and I work from home) that low rumbling is probably jus ..read more

Gold has enjoyed a stellar week and is now up more than 20% over the past six months OANDA senior market analyst Ed Moya says a run to record territory is “not that far away”  All the winners and losers this week in the ASX listed precious metals space Our Gold Digger column wraps all the news driving ASX stocks with exposure to precious metals.   You may have seen us get just a little worked up about gold this week, as we damn well should. Some price reporters have bullion trading just US$8 below the magisterial US$2000/oz mark. That’s a gain of more than 20% in the past six month ..read more

Lithium chemical prices continue to fall Ford’s EV business to report US$3bn loss as it chases Tesla Patriot extends CV5 pegmatite at Corvette to 3.15km All your lithium news, Friday March 24. Chinese lithium chemical pricing has extended losses due to weak demand for electric vehicles compounded by discounts on internal combustion vehicles, sending the Benchmark Lithium Price Index down by 7.9% in the assessment period from March 8 to March 22. Lithium carbonate prices saw the biggest loss, falling 9.6% to US$53,091/t while the lithium hydroxide premium increased with its pricing falling 5 ..read more

Financials dragged the ASX 200 lower on Friday Cathie Wood snapped up more Block Inc shares amid Hindenburg-fulled selloff ASX gold shares continue ascent   Financials dragged down the ASX today after sector heavyweight Block Inc (ASX:SQ2) crashed almost 20% following a scathing report by short seller, Hindenburg Research. At the close of Friday, the ASX 200 index was down by 0.2% and 0.6% for the week. Overnight, parent shares of dual-listed Block Inc fell by 15% on NYSE after Hindenburg claimed that Block allowed criminal activity to flourish on its platform due to lax internal contro ..read more

Lanthanein Resources has completed heritage and flora surveys at its Lyons rare earths project ahead of an extensive 10,000m RC drilling program next month. The program will target large scale carbonatite targets and high-grade ironstones, with carbonatites becoming increasingly important due to the potential to host economic quantities of Th, U, Nb, P, Y and rare earth elements. The company will also drill two diamond holes into deeper carbonate targets, jointly funded under Department of Mines Industry Regulation and Safety (DMIRS) EIS scheme, to investigate potential for large tonnage REE c ..read more