What if restarting mines crash lithium prices back into a glut?
Fast mine restarts flip the lithium deficit back to glut, crushing carbonate/spodumene prices and the pure-play miners; Freeport/copper is the wrong proxy since lithium and copper balances diverge. Direct rhyme is the 2023 lithium crash (~80% off) when supply caught up and Albemarle/Pilbara cratered. Transmission: hurts Australian/Chilean producers and Chinese converters, helps battery-pack buyers. Forward angle: this time idled tonnes can return faster, so the glut can overshoot deeper than 2023.
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The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 6–18 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a mixed shock. Idled mines restart fast, flipping the 2026 deficit back to glut and crashing elevated lithium prices, hitting miners. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Industrial demand ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.