Highlights

• Fastmarkets introduces global price benchmarks for dysprosium and terbium amid fragmenting supply chains, using verified buyer-seller data despite China's 85-90% refining dominance and limited spot liquidity.
• The pricing methodology faces structural constraints: proprietary contracts remain invisible, reported volumes may be irregular, and most trade flows through relationship-driven agreements rather than transparent spot markets.
• While ex-China sourcing efforts by Japan, U.S., and Europe create early price reference points, these benchmarks represent price discovery ahead of liquidity—directionally useful but not absolute market truth.

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Fastmarkets (opens in a new tab) is stepping into a vacuum—launching “global” prices for dysprosium and terbium as supply chains begin to fragment beyond China. For a lay reader: they are trying to put a price on a market that only partially exists. To their credit, this is not guesswork alone. Fastmarkets actively solicits data from both buyers and sellers, building benchmarks from two-sided market input. That gives them more leverage—and more credibility—than casual observers might assume.

The Structural Constraint: Control Still Concentrated

The hard reality remains:

• China controls ~85–90%+ of refining
• Heavy rare earth separation is even more concentrated
• Most volumes move through long-term, relationship-driven contracts

This means:

• Spot liquidity is thin
• Prices are often negotiated privately
• Much “ex-China” supply is recycled or drawn from inventory

A true spot market requires depth, velocity, and transparency.

This market is still early-stage. So, is it truly correct to name it spot?

Inside the Black Box: How Reliable Is the Price?

Fastmarkets’ methodology is more rigorous than critics suggest—but still incomplete.

They rely on:

• Verified submissions from market participants
• Cross-checking buy-side and sell-side indications
• Broker intelligence and trade confirmations (where available)

But gaps remain:

• Proprietary contracts are largely invisible (many have serious non-disclosure components--some with national security implications)
• Some submissions are indicative, not executable
• Volumes behind reported prices may be small or irregular, and this can certainly skew the output

So the price is best understood as a validated range of reality, not a fully cleared market price.

Signal vs. Scale: What’s Actually Happening

There is real movement:

• Japan, the U.S., and Europe are actively working to be able to source outside China
• Dy and Tb are emerging as strategic choke points
• Separation and refining continue to be chokepoints, along with magnet manufacturing at scale
• Early ex-China trade flows are forming price reference points

But this is price discovery ahead of liquidity.

Narrative vs. Physics: Where Caution Is Warranted

The idea of a “global price” suggests a unified market.

That is not yet true.

• China still anchors marginal supply
• Contracts still dominate real volume
• Western supply chains are still under construction

As Rare Earth Exchanges™ has chronicled, this is not a fully functioning market—it is a thin layer of price transparency forming atop a controlled system.

Bottom Line: Imperfect—but Necessary

Regardless, Fastmarkets deserves credit. Without efforts like this, the ex-China market would remain completely opaque.

But investors should be clear-eyed: These benchmarks are directionally useful, not the absolute truth. They are pricing the edges of a market in formation, not the core of an already established one.