Everyone wants more of lithium, the shiny, soft, and highly reactive mineral that powers the battery inside your smartphone and Prius (or Tesla, if you're one of the lucky ones).
Annual sales of electric vehicles are forecast to jump from 1 million last year to 9.2 million in the middle of the next decade. These cars are major consumers of lithium.
Supplies have been tight, but miners in China and the high deserts of the Andes are racing to produce a whole lot more. (Chile is sometimes called the Saudi Arabia of lithium.)
Morgan Stanley analysts just revised their supply estimates upward by 35 percent over the next 8 years. That's going to crush lithium prices_in the most bearish case by more than 50 percent by 2025.
That's a good thing for the cost of your Prius and iPhone, but not at all a good thing for lithium mining stocks such as Albemarle, Galaxy Resources, SQM, and Tianqi Lithium Industries. Look out below.
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