alt Hacker News> 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.
> 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.
I 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.