The potential returns are enormous, but so are the risks. Remember any number of things could disrupt the price, from novel battery tech, to new mining opportunities. That’s the long term, the short term is just crazy.

... and that's what the Bloomberg article is trying to put into the minds of its readers. I don't really wonder why.

I have a bit of SQM and it is a wild ride. It jumps around a lot, but has done quite well for me as a long term investment.

Doesn't the efficient market theory ensure that any outsized future returns are already reflected in the price?

an efficient market is a model that assumes the same information is available for all players, so don't put too much weight on it. it's an approximation that's sometimes useful.

Any engineer knows that nothing is perfectly efficient.

Well doesn’t that make no sense at all?

Through what mechanism could a market know about the future? The market isn’t God or an oracle. It’s just a bunch of actors going back and forth.

You and I can’t predict the future, why would averaging out guesses be any better?

And if we’re both using the average of our initials guesses to correct our guesses, then the spread is reduced.... which looks like less uncertainty when in fact nothing fundamental has changed!

What the market is very good for is as a heuristic to solve the NP hard problem of how much to produce. (Misses first worked on this and then Hyek got the bank Of Sweden prize in economics).

Well, ALB had multiple gains and is in a low now. Perhaps by the news of the Sodium "alternative"

Sodium will always be heavier for the same energy. It's fundamental physics.