Rare Earths Aren't That Rare

choi

Tim Loh, Tatiana Darie and Simon Casey, It Turns Out Rare Earths Aren't That Rare. Bloomberg BusinessWeek, July 6, 2015
http://washpost.bloomberg.com/St ... 32U8PIVLEC586MSDSER

Quote:

"On Thursday, Molycorp filed for bankruptcy protection, having run out of cash after a precipitous and sustained slide in rare-earth prices. The company has become a cautionary tale for investors looking for the next hot thing, a lesson in how excessively high commodity prices can quickly reverse.  'In hindsight it was an absolute commodity bubble,' said Jon Hykawy, an analyst at Stormcrow Capital Ltd. in Toronto who tracks the rare earths industry.

"Until the 1990s, the US was the dominant producer of rare earths and China mined almost none. That would soon change as the largest US mine shut and Chinese producers took advantage of cheap labor and more relaxed environmental regulations. By the early 2000s, China supplied 97 percent of the global market, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Rare earths would soon assume geopolitical significance * * * when China cut export quotas by 72 percent to ensure domestic supply.

My comment:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: A bet on the metals flopped when their scarcity was short-lived
(b) There is no need to read the rest, with which we are familiar.