Wealthion Macro Bites 11/17/25

Ganfeng Lithium Group Chair Li Liangbin forecast 2026 lithium demand to surge 30% driving a potentially more-than-50% price increase to 150,000 yuan ($21,105) per ton.  Liangbin’s comments accelerated the recent rise in lithium prices, vaulting the most active lithium carbonate contract on the Guangzhou Futures Exchange to close limit-up 9% at 95,200 yuan ($13,400) per ton.

Hawkish comments on Friday from KC Fed’s Schmid, Dallas Fed’s Logan and Cleveland Fed’s Hammack reduced consensus expectations for a December to less than 50/50 (43.4%).  (Gold fell 2.1% on the news.)

To encourage miners to build domestic refineries and develop a bullion banking system, Indonesia will begin charging major miners (such as PT Freeport) export duties ranging from 7.5% to 15% on all gold products with less processed variants subject to higher rates.  Indonesia Finance Ministry spokesman Febrio Kacaribu announced the new regulations will be issued in Nov. and take effect two weeks later.

DoubleLine’s Jeffrey Gundlach cited “garbage lending,” unhealthy valuations and “incredibly speculative” bets in warning the next big financial-market crisis will be a GFC-like meltdown in the $1.7T private credit market.  The “bond king” currently favors a 20% cash position to hedge against market implosion and recently reduced his recommended gold position from 25% to 15% (reflecting recent strength).

The crypto selloff continues, with bitcoin touching a Sunday low of $92,935, down 26.2% in just six weeks from its 10/6/25 high ($126,251), more than wiping out its entire 2025 gain (which peaked at 34.7%).  The recent bitcoin decline has accelerated the underperformance of more speculative “altcoins” which has been ongoing since late-2024:  the MarketVector Digital Assets Small-Cap Index (50 smallest tokens in the MVIS Digital Assets 100 Index) has now declined 72% from its 12/6/24 high to its lowest level since Nov. ’20.

DXY dollar index +0.1%, spot gold -0.1% and spot silver +0.7% .

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