As molybdenum prices dropped by one-third in only a few weeks, Thompson Creek Metals President and CEO Kevin Loughrey recently told analysts "we have some reason to believe that we are near the bottom right now."

"Our sense of the world is that moly demand will come back really quickly when the financing mechanisms of the world capital markets loosen up somewhat," he reassured the analysts.

Nevertheless, Loughrey noted that the financial crisis has caused "a diminution of molybdenum demand. And that demand reduction, in turn, has caused a dramatic reduction in prices unlike anything I think any of us have seen in the moly business in a long time." Moly prices have dropped from their average $30 per pound price, which had held for some time, to only $12/lb as of Friday.

However, Loughrey blamed the price drop primarily on the inability to get financing for projects that consume steel, rather than the speculative investing that has spelled doom for other metals.