Cobalt supply tsunami hits the market of last resort

Someone delivered 23 metric tons of cobalt to London Metal Exchange warehouses last month. This may not sound like a big deal, but it was the first LME warranting of the battery metal since February 2022. It is, moreover, just the tip of the cobalt iceberg. There were another 684 tons sitting in the LME storage shadows at the end of June. This off-warrant inventory, which is being warehoused under a contractual option for full warranting, first showed up in February, when it amounted to 839 tons. The stocks activity has revitalized a contract that didn't trade at all for…