Nickel prices on the London Metal Exchange have climbed 10% since the start of 2018 - with the dollar the main supporting factor of the rise, the spotlight is being shone on the nickel price's extreme volatility.
On Thursday January 25, nickel closed on the LME in positive territory for the sixth consecutive trading day and was trading at a two-and-a-half-year high of $13,915 per tonne. The last time nickel hit $14,000 per tonne or above was in May 2015. "Nickel is in a very sustainable bull market and has been for over a year now. The recent volatility reflected a period of excessive exuberance around electric vehicle demand which caused a short-lived price spike. But that was just noise around a positive underlying trend," Guy Wolf, global head of market analytics at Marex Spectron, explained. "Nickel is a classic late-cycle sensitive metal. Demand has picked up and supply, having seen no investment for years during the bear market, is not...