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Ok so I idd some digging and bloomberg is light on analysis on this one. The graph that got me wondering as to why the price has spiked was the mined/produced
by KaiserPro 2mo ago
Ok so I idd some digging and bloomberg is light on analysis on this one.
The graph that got me wondering as to why the price has spiked was the mined/produced tonnes of tungsten from what I can see.
I naturally assumed, like the article is hinting, that demand has risen significantly.
It appears that china has limited exports and the USA has demanded that military applications needs to be sourced for people they like, rather than china russia and north korea. Demand has apparently increased by about 4%, but that doesn't explain the 10x price jump.
All I know is my carbide tooling is going to cost a shitload more now.
- cucumber3732842 2mo ago> Demand has apparently increased by about 4%, but that doesn't explain the 10x price jump. The price is set at the margin. Mines in wealthy high regulation countries are incredibly inelastic.
- KaiserPro 2mo agoI know that, but given that tungsten demand is ~80-90% civilian, ie depends on how well the economy is doing, a 4% demand increase is pretty within spec. The bigger thing here is china has restricted export to something like 14 companies. so a supply shock makes much more sense. The natural question is what is china doing with that spare capacity? is it being used domestically? diverted to some other country? are they just stock piling it? after all they need a load of it for machine tooling.