Well, it ended up being a pretty dreadful start to the trading week for the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) and ASX shares. At market close, the ASX 200 ended up losing 0.95% and dropped back down to 7,046.9 points. But it was far, far worse for the Lynas Rare Earths Ltd (ASX: LYC) share price.
Lynas shares had a shocker in Monday's session. The rare earths processor ended up closing at $9.19 by the end of the day, down a painful 5.45%.
So what went wrong for Lynas today?
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What happened to the Lynas share price on Monday?
Well, it's rather hard to say despite the size of Lynas' drop. The company hasn't put out any ASX releases or announcements since 12 August.
There has been recent talk about what the future for companies like Lynas might hold though, which could be flowing into investor sentiment. For example, earlier this month, my Fool colleague Brendon discussed the potential of graphene-based batteries to displace the current lithium-ion technology.
Electric vehicles, most of which are powered by lithium-ion batteries, depend heavily on the kinds of rare earths that Lynas processes. But given that rare earths are used in the charging mechanism for electric batteries and not in the batteries themselves, it's unlikely this angle is what is causing the weakness in Lynas shares today.
So perhaps it is just the general distaste for mining and materials companies that investors seemed to have developed today that dragged Lynas down. Lynas was by no means the only share in its sector to have shown weakness.
So perhaps it is just the general distaste for mining and materials companies that investors seemed to have developed today that dragged Lynas down. Lynas was by no means the only share in its sector to have shown weakness today.
We also saw big falls in companies ranging from Newcrest Mining Ltd (ASX: NCM) and Neometals Ltd (ASX: NMT) to Piedmont Lithium Inc (ASX: PLL) and Coronado Global Resources Inc (ASX: CRN).
The large miners BHP Group Ltd (ASX: BHP) and Rio Tinto Limited (ASX: RIO) also finished in the red, but not nearly as deeply as Lynas.
So perhaps it was just the negative sentiment we've seen across the mining and materials sector that put a dent in the Lynas share price today. This latest fall puts Lynas shares at a year-to-date loss of 16.68% in 2022 thus far. At the current share price, Lynas has a market capitalisation of $8.29 billion.
