Nickel's three-month price on the London Metal Exchange soared more than 2% at the close of trading on Tuesday January 29, with the metal's futures price now trading firmly above $12,000 per tonne against a backdrop of dwindling LME stocks.
LME nickel's price action has followed an uptrend over January, and is trading over 13% higher after hitting its lowest level since December 2017 at $10,500 per tonne on December 31, 2018.Prompting the upward move, total LME nickel stocks remain at their lowest level since 2014 at just over 200,000 tonnes, while there remains one dominant warrant holding position at 50-79% of total LME stocks, tom/next and cash positions. "We're seeing a fairly big rise in the price; close to $12,000 per tonne, but most analysts don't expect a huge price rise for this year - nowhere near $15,000 per tonne," a European-based nickel trader told Fastmarkets. "For a lot of the analysts the price forecast has already been reached, but it will...