Lead's three-month price on the London Metal Exchange had tumbled by 2.5% by the close of trading on Thursday May 9, reaching its lowest level since August 2016 at an intraday low of $1,830.50 per tonne.
Three-month lead prices were down by just under 10% since late-February, when prices last exceeded $2,000 per tonne. The price of lead spent most of 2018 above that threshold level, and while LME stocks continued to fall to 74,075 tonnes, prices were now firmly below $1,900 per tonne.Meanwhile, the zinc-lead price differential, or switch, has narrowed to $775 per tonne. This was down from more than $1,000 per tonne last month, when lead futures were trading around $1,950 per tonne and zinc's price rocketed to nearly $3,000 per tonne."Compared to the rest of its peers [among base metals], LME lead is the weakest of the base...