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Nickel is travelling south
News - 16 Jul 07
Nickel prices on the London Metal Exchange are doing the same as the holiday makers in Germany and travelling south, and pretty heftily at that. The 3 months quote, after its relatively recent high of USD 51,800.00/mt, has come down to USD 31,500.00/mt, causing a correction of nearly 40 %. This move however has less to do with a seasonal decrease in demand than with rather an ever-increasing move, which the stainless steel works and their PR departments had propagated. Irritated by the high nickel prices and their decrease in profit margins, they tried, and in hindsight quite successfully, to put a damper on the price rise in commodities. The fact should not be brushed over though that the high level of nickel prices, and therefore stainless steel, had created a negative influence on demand.
Markets high, producers happy
News - 18 Jun 07
Is the correction in the nickel market, with prices at times even below USD 40,000.00/mt, due to changes in demand by stainless steel producers, or due to the short-term influence of speculative participants aiming to bring the potentially illiquid market lower to cover their short positions? Probably both contribute to this overdue consolidation.
Too risky to buy and too risky to sell
News - 19 May 07
The nickel market is still difficult to forecast. At one point it seemed as if the pessimistic news items would cause a corrective turndown in prices, but then just days later we were confronted with yet more new highs. In general the market is so unsure that it is almost pointless to make any short-term predictions. As one leading investment bank pointed out: “It is too risky to buy or to sell nickel”. Even when this seems unproductive, our readers this time have to come to terms with their own fate, or positions, for the state of affairs is too unclear to give a serious view. This is with one exemption: middle to long-term prices will stay on a high level. This seems quite sure and is the general consensus of the market. But this appraisal does not exclude short-term corrections from these present levels of all time highs. One should not forget that nickel production is running at full capacity level und even the slightest imbalance could lead (again?) to a short fall in the market supply. In a recent report published by Standard & Poors, one assumes that the nickel market will not experience any noteworthy surplus in supply before at least 2010. Furthermore, even when the increase of stainless steel production remains behind that of last year’s record growth, a solid increase of 7.7% is expected, clearly still above the expected long-term average. The austenite proportion is expected to grow by only 0.4%.
Land of the rising euro
News - 19 Apr 07
A first attempt at breaking the psychological barrier in the 3 months price of nickel of USD 50,000.00/mt was made in the middle of March, but this stopped at USD 48,550.00/mt making a correction down to USD 41,400.00/mt. A second attempt was made at the beginning of April. At USD 50,050.00/mt the barrier was broken for a short time. Yet another all time high again. Profit taking then cooled nickel prices down to USD 45,700.00/mt. At the moment we seem to have another rally in progress with quotes of around and above USD 48,000.00/mt. Copper quotes at times over USD 8,000.00/mt and aluminium prices of over USD 2,900.00/mt help to support this new attempt to significantly break the USD 50,000.00/mt barrier.
Requirements globally covered – economies locally destroyed
News - 15 Mar 07
A new high of above USD 47,000.00/mt for the three months quote was reached in nickel. To avoid repetition, further comments about this are not necessary. It is already clear that analysts, contrary to previous years, are now rapidly correcting their price predictions to reflect more price rises so as not to be confronted at year end with gaps between prediction and reality of up to 100% and more (as in 2006). At the commencement of 2007, Metal Bulletin published figures from analysts of twelve renowned broker, bank and research establishments relating to the industrial metals of the London Metal Exchange. They arrived at an average price of USD 26,424.00/mt, whereby the lowest estimation was USD 20,948.00/mt, the highest USD 38,500.00/mt. After January, February and half of March have now passed, this value, even after a theoretically possible massive price correction, can hardly be reached.
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