LONDON – Wanna buy into one of the hottest commodities in town? No, it’s not lithium. That’s so much last year’s thing. We’re talking about cobalt. And this one’s really hot. On the London Metal Exchange (LME) the price for three-month cobalt has leapt from $32,750 per tonne at the start of January to a current $58,500.
This stellar near 80-percent price surge mirrors what happened to lithium prices a year or so ago. The linkage is both metals’ evolution from niche applications to mainstream usage in the batteries that are now powering the green technology revolution.
If a minimum $58,500 bet is a bit too much for you, some bright hedge fund guys have come up with a cheaper option. For just nine Canadian dollars you can now buy a share in Cobalt 27 Capital Corp, which made its C$200 million ($150.7 million) debut on Canada’s Venture Exchange last month.
Cobalt 27 describes itself as a “pure-play cobalt investment vehicle”, an alternative to investing in producers such as Glencore, for whom cobalt is one small part of a much wider portfolio.
Just don’t tell the automotive guys. Because if Cobalt 27 is right in its assessment there is much more upside to the cobalt price, there’s going to be some sort of reaction to a bunch of investors holding physical stocks of a strategic metal in short supply.
For the rest of this article: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cobalt27-ipo-ahome-idUSKBN19Q2FC