Base metals on the London Metal Exchange ended mostly higher at the close of trading on Thursday May 17, with aluminium's three-month price down 1% after a huge re-warranting of 138,650 tonnes at Port Klang this morning.
The light metal's cash/three-month spread remains in a backwardation, moving from $23b per tonne earlier in the day to a current reading of $10b per tonne. The re-warranting of more than 138,000 tonnes of material at Port Klang in Malaysia was the largest of the year for aluminium, with the metal's price dipping to a daily low of $2,248.50 - its lowest since May 2. "Although headline stocks rose by only 6,275 tons overnight, on-warrant stocks jumped by 153,000 tons. Until Wednesday, on-warrant stocks had been down by about 15% since April 6 - the day of the Rusal sanctions - so today's jump was quite large," Edward Meir, analyst at INTL FCStone said. The move comes after the formation of a 109-day queue to remove material from Malaysia's Istim warehouse in Port Klang. "Despite the loosening of US sanctions against...