Member Info for Basscadet

I work in a very large company. We're suffering a rash of AI evangelists at the moment. It's 99.9% hype. Doesn't work; smoke and mirrors; and generally more complucated to use that just doing whetever the thing is you need to do yourself. Good for some very specific use cases but not much more. Tech companies are the opposite of progressive. More about concentrating wealth and control than empowering the people.

Here's the explanation for the Lloyds rise Bluebelly - https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/21/rachel-reeves-car-finance-case-lenders-shares-lloyds-close-brothers

There are plenty of battery recycling startups as well as programmes at large manufacturers now.

No doubt the market's aware is all BS. The US is already at peak hydrocarban production with no way to expand and his other policies directly contradict any plan there could be to increase. I don't think the CU market is driven by US EV consumption. EV sales are hitting records arund the world. If the US does pull back they'll just get left behind.

Can't beleive I'm saying this but feels good being back in the 4s.

We got our RNA. Overall very positive IMO. ~350 tonnes CU lost to power problems. Leach results exceptional and warrant acceleration.

It sounds like they've tried to build even more resilience into power supply but I can't figure out the details from the text.

Chrome getting very close to 2M tonnes a year.

Hydrogen gas as an energy source has always been a dodgy proposition looking for investor money to waste. Albeit, I did get a hydrogen powered taxi from Manchester airport to Sheffield a couple of years back. The driver said it was the best car he'd ever owned, incredibly cheap to run and next no maintenance needed. Strange, anyway, new solid hydrogen tech does look interesting due to ease of transport, storage, no embrittlement, etc.

So can I but I hope not.

I for one hope not helloDave. No. 4 on your list at least is part of a long defined consolidation and so not relevant.

I can't see impending trade wars helping.

Thanks for reporting back everyone.

Shame PGM prices aren't getting with the programme just yet.

I think the expected market rebound will continue but only in the short term now. There have to be questions over the Chips Act continuing at all due to spite and trade wars will subdue the entire market.

Numbers look very good to me. Chrome guidance is way off surely. Should absolutely smash that which is why it'll be reviewed at H1 I guess.

Some explanation of why copper guidance looked low for this year with ROAN now needing leach to reach full capacity. At least now we know and it looks like a solid foundation for growth.

It's not actually a semi conductor company.

Well I was going to say hope so Gotrader and that the pipeline's looking strong as always but the news about the CEO is a bit of a shock. What's happened there. Has the ring of someone's done something unfortunate after one too many on a business trip about it.

Wow, it really does. Good find wildtiger. I've read several artciles on ULTRARAM over the last couple of years. It could be truly revolutionary. Great to see IQE at the heart of it.

Fair enough but you know what they say about past performance :-)

I'm not quite as old as you edzi. Didn't become politically aware until Thatcher and so the only Labour government I've known wasn't really a Labour goverment. When a party's been out of power for a long time and they win it back I do believe they genuinely want to improve people's lives and fix things. How they go about it depends on the constraints of the time. A lot comes down to competance. That will take longer to judge.

There's corruption everywhere unfortunataley. Tory's are way out in front and over the hill currently which is probably more to do with proximity to power than anything else. Ministers don't have to decalre their gifts. Bojo took more from a single donor in his final year than Starmer's taken in his whole career. We'll have to do a comparison to Labour if they're still in power in 12 years time. There's obviously a very difficult job to do bringing the country's finances under control after years of mismanagement. I don't buy the politics of envy part. "Tory scum," Was in relation to the personal character of members of the governmant at the time and very well deserved IMO.

I don't feel too bad about this, "Top 4% of the wealthy pay about 30% of the countries tax." Figures aren't precise but it looks like the top 1% own somewhere between 13% and 25% of the wealth while the top 10% own ~50%. 30% for the top 4 sounds about right. Maybe it would be more appropriate if some were levied as a wealth tax.

Specific cases such as wth the Unite building should be outed and punished. Fully support that including prosecution if fraud is found.

Funny all the people panicking in advance of a budget for which for once nothing has yet been leaked in advance. Says a lot more about their insecurities than what the government's actually going to do. Also question the motives of newspapers adding 2 + 2 and getting whatever thier agenda equals. Not indluding you in that Edzi. I realise you are just passing on a story.

Feels like a lot of news flow just now :)