Swedish steelmakers SSAB no longer plans to acquire the Ijmuiden plant in the Netherlands off of Tata Steel, SSAB said on Friday January 29.Tata Steel initiated discussions with SSAB on the sale of its IJmuiden plant in the Netherlands and related downstream assets in November 2020. After the announcement, market sources said it would have allowed SSAB to increase its presence in Northern Europe.A...Read More
China's Baowu Steel Group, the world's largest steelmaker, is in talks with Shandong Iron & Steel Group Co for a potential merger.While a small segment of the steel market already had some knowledge of this development, particularly after Baowu Steel sent some of its company officials to Shandong Steel to conduct surveys on the topic of a merger, the matter became public after local media reported...Read More
Peter Krauth, the editor of Gold Resource Investor, traces previous gold bull markets and lays out what he believes is in store for the current one.If we want to make intelligent forecasts and decisions about our future, we need to understand not only where we are today, but also how we got here. So, let's look at previous gold bull markets for some insight on what we might expect from this one.Go...Read More
A new sheriff is in in town, and he’s making some rearrangements. Will the new order of things support the price of gold?What a blitzkrieg! Joe Biden certainly wastes no time in signing executive orders. Since inauguration, he introduced several policies, including mandating masks on federal property, in airports and on certain public transportation, and the end of a travel bank on some coun...Read More
General Motors (GM) plans to transition its entire light-duty vehicle fleet to electric vehicles (EVs) by 2035, bringing an end to its production of gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles. The automaker aims to go carbon neutral by 2040.A GM spokesperson told Fastmarkets that the company has set a goal to exclusively produce EVs in its light-duty fleet and discontinue producing internal combustion...Read More
South America's import prices for flat-rolled steel were mostly down during the week ended Friday January 29, with China-origin material offered at lower levels for April shipment.Some customers, on the other hand, had concerns that their previous expectations of a steeper downtrend after the Chinese New Year holiday period would not materialize due to high raw material costs and potential output...Read More
Copper concentrate treatment and refining charges (TC/RCs) continued to drop toward the end of January as smelters cover cargoes that look to be delayed from Chile and Peru.What you need to know China smelters covering short positions exacerbated by Chile, Peru delays High sea swells are preventing cargoes from leaving some ports in Chile Las Bambas shipments have started to resume A...Read More
Prices for ferro-molybdenum and molybdic oxide rallied during the second half of the week ended Friday January 29 while concerns about interrupted shipments from Chile reduced the hopes that tightness in Europe and Asia might ease in the near term.Fastmarkets' price assessment for ferro-molybdenum 65% Mo min, in-whs Rotterdam, widened upward to $24.60-26.00 per kg on January 29, up by 2.3% from th...Read More
Pig iron import prices in the United States fell sharply in the week ended on Friday January 29, with at least one deal reported for Brazil-origin material.Fastmarkets' price assessment for pig iron, import, cfr Gulf of Mexico, US was at $500-510 per tonne on Friday, down by $65-75 from $575 per tonne the previous week.After several weeks of a quiet market, information started to circulate ab...Read More
A differentiated fee structure designed to drive member-to-member trade away from the telephone market is being proposed by the London Metal Exchange as part of its discussion paper. The goal is to incentivize trade on the exchange's electronic trading platform, LMESelect, and is proposed to be achieved by cutting fees to trade electronically while raising fees for the telephone market by around 5...Read More
The London Metal Exchange and its clearing house are revisiting a proposal to transition to a different way of calculating its clearing methodology. The exchange announced its discussion paper on the topic on Tuesday January 19. The last attempt was made in 2017 and was rejected by LME members because it would make the provision of credit lines expensive and result in the rapid withdrawal of...Read More
Covid-19 appears to have claimed another casualty: the London Metal Exchange ring trading floor. The closure of the floor, now entering its 144th year, has been proposed in a discussion paper issued by the exchange earlier on Tuesday January 19.The open outcry floor may be old, but it didn't appear to have serious underlying health issues. It has successfully fought back against talk it was set to...Read More
Tin's forward price rose by 1.5% in the week ended Friday January 29, while the rest of the base-metals complex on the London Metal Exchange, nickel and zinc in particular, showed lower prices than on Monday.This was blamed on several macro-economic factors turning sentiment downward for metals."With the exception of tin, across the board the base metal suite has come under pressure this week," St...Read More
Seaborne coking coal prices in both the fob and cfr markets kept relatively flat on Friday January 29, with no deals heard during the day although sources do not believe the seaborne premium hard coking coal fob price will exceed $160 per tonne in the short term.Fastmarkets indicesPremium hard coking coal, fob DBCT: $154.92 per tonne, down $0.18 per tonnePremium hard coking coal, cfr Jingtang: $21...Read More
The arrival of around a quarter of a billion dollars of zinc into London Metal Exchange warehouses this week has dented the metal's price prospects, confirming analysts' view of a well-supplied market. A total of 105,800 tonnes of zinc was delivered onto the LME system on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, all in the United States and Southeast Asian port locations, bringing total inventories on the...Read More
Blinded by greed, many so-called gold & silver "advocates" think they can end the manipulation by feeding the Beast. It doesn't work that way...(by Half Dollar) I think the Cartel is about to take silver behind the woodshed, and, by extension, take some otherwise smart people to the cleaners.That is to say, otherwise smart people think they're about to get rich quick in silver, but it doesn't work...Read More
The SEC has just released a statement on the recent market volatility. Will the SEC, or the CFTC, be forced to open the can of worms that is silver?(by Half Dollar) The government can only ever do one of two things: It can get in the way, or it can get out of the way.That's pretty much it.And when it comes to agencies like the CFTC, or the SEC, well, they pretty much only ever get in the way, and...Read More
The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view. buoyant flat steel market and rising raw material prices resulted in large price rises for welded pipe products across all regions in January 2021.Increases in the price assessments for helical submerged arc-welded (HSAW) pipes were of the magnitude of $140-190 per tonne, with the exception of Europe, where prices were...Read More
The small fish are fighting back, and the big fish have good reasons to be quite scared...by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse BlogFor decades, the big fish on Wall Street have been able to do virtually anything that they want, but now the small fish are fighting back and it has been a beautiful thing to watch. Finally it is payback time, and the losses have been absolutely staggering. I...Read More
This is NOT about price! This is about EXPOSURE of the 4 Massive Silver Shorts! Hang on tight as the markets...by Bix Weir of Road to RootaI've been fighting the Silver Battle for over 20 years and we have NEVER had this kind of EXPOSURE to the SILVER MANIPULATION fraud as we have seen over the past 48 hours. This is NOT about price...this is about EXPOSURE of the 4 Massive Silver Shorts! Hang on...Read More