Fastmarkets worked to empower its customers in 2018 - a year when they had to navigate metal markets in which fundamentals were often tightening even as greater political restraints were placed on trade than for many years.
Here's a quick review of the key developments, which also indicate our direction for 2019:
We consulted in detail with the industry to meet its requirements for greater transparency in volatile markets, enabling us to launch more than 20 new price seriesWe put
13 of our benchmark prices through an independent IOSCO assurance process to give those that use them even greater confidence in their representativeness, independence and robustnessWe refined the specifications of scores of our prices, increasing the frequency at which we indexed or assessed many of them, enabling us to provide more continual coverage of key marketsWe hired and trained more staff to enhance our price reporting and market coverage. We now have a pricing, editorial and research team that numbers more than 100 people worldwide to cover the metals and minerals markets We rebranded our business to clarify what we do as a global team and provide a clearer experience for our customers in every part of the worldWe worked closely with futures exchanges to list contracts against our benchmark prices to give more participants in the physical industry the capacity to hedge their price riskWe produced market reports that captured key developments in markets. To take a few examples from December alone:
Thailand's Padaeng quits zinc trading as chronic backwardation hits distributorsFOCUS: Why China's implementation of new rebar policy is failing to support vanadium pricesCSI purchasing slabs from USS in tariff workaroundGLOBAL LITHIUM WRAP: Chinese lithium carbonate prices firm on tight supply; hydroxide quotation dips on weak demandWe trimmed and rationalized to reduce the amount of non-core information that we published to focus on the markets and services that really matter(In the context of rationalization, at the start of 2019 we plan to stop publishing the daily morning briefs and week-in-brief reports. These services were introduced some years ago to aggregate coverage for our subscribers but we think we will provide more value by investing that time instead in pricing and covering turbid markets)Over the next year, our editors, analysts and reporters will continue with this strategy of working closely with the metals industry to launch, develop and refine the benchmarks and coverage that the market needs to price, market and purchase material.
But we are also on a technological journey, an early milestone of which is the Excel Add-in, which will enable you to integrate our prices into your Excel spreadsheets seamlessly. Much more of this will be seen in 2019 while we develop our customer platforms.
Fastmarkets exists to enable you to steer surely through whatever the markets bring over the next 12 months.
If you have any suggestions, comments or advice to help us in our objective, do not hesitate to contact me.
Alex Harrison
Editorial & pricing directoraharrison@fastmarkets.com