'Entrepreneurs, enter the lithium refining business. It's a license to print money.' - Elon Musk

NEW YORK (July 21)  Elon Musk is seeing metals prices starting to soften, but lithium pricing he called "insane," during the earnings call for Tesla.

Tesla reported a revenue drop of 13% to $13.6 billion. Vehicles deliveries were down compared to last quarter. The company said it faced manufacturing challenges related to shutdowns, global supply chain disruptions, labor shortages and logistics and other complication.

Lithium was one of them, according to Musk on a conference call discussing the quarter.

"[The] pricing of lithium is insane," said Musk. "I would like to once again urge entrepreneurs to enter the lithium refining business. The mining is relatively easy. The refining is much harder."

Benchmark Minerals lithium prince index has lithium up 380% year-on-year.

"Lithium is actually a very common...pretty much everywhere. But you have to refine the lithium into battery-grade lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide, which has to be extremely high purity. So, it is basically like minting money right now. There is like software margins in lithium processing right now. So, I would really like to encourage, once again, entrepreneurs to enter the lithium refining business. You can’t lose. It’s a license to print money."

Lithium aside, Musk said that commodities are trending lower.

KITCO