A summary of base metals premiums from across the globe for the week to Tuesday February 2.Please click...Read More

Here are five Fastmarkets stories you might have missed on Tuesday February 2 that are worth another look.Steelmaker ArcelorMittal is planning to restart blast furnace (BF) B at its Ghent plant in Belgium by the middle of February this year, the company told Fastmarkets on February 2.Aluminium...Read More

The frenzy of buying activity in silver, attributed to a group of retail investors using the Reddit forum r/WallStreetBets and other social media sites, is waning.The silver surge - which began on January 27 and saw the price of the industrial metal soar to an eight-year high of more than $30 per oz before slipping to just below $27 per oz by Tuesday January 2 - followed a phenomenal upswell in th...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

Cynthia Carroll has been appointed an independent non-executive director of Glencore plc, according to a statement on the company's website on Tuesday Fenruary 2. Her appointment takes effect immediately.Carroll was chief executive officer of Anglo American from March 2007 until April 2013, and in 2015 she became chair of Vedanta Resources.She started her career as an exploration geologist with Am...Read More

Zimbabwe emerged as the most likely beneficiary of South Africa's proposed chrome ore export tax in a recent Fastmarkets' poll. Fastmarkets examines the investment prospects for Zimbabwe's chrome sector and some of the hurdles the domestic industry faces, and why participants showed particular confidence in the country.In the poll, when asked which chrome-producing countries would likely benefit f...Read More

The London Metal Exchange tin price continued its uptrend by setting a new 2021 high and a historic $1,510-per-tonne backwardation on its benchmark spread, while the rest of the base metals complex closed on a mixed tone on Tuesday February 2. Tin's three-month price kept up its unabated rise on Tuesday despite a rising dollar, with the fundamentals for the metal superseding macroeconomic concerns...Read More

Seaborne iron ore prices tumbled on Tuesday February 2 amid poor steel demand which weighed further on market sentiment, sources told Fastmarkets.Fastmarkets iron ore indices 62% Fe fines, cfr Qingdao: $149.80 per tonne, down $7.27 per tonne62% Fe low-alumina fines, cfr Qingdao: $150.37 per tonne, down $7.40 per tonne58% Fe fines high-grade premium, cfr Qingdao: $139.28 per tonne, down $4.67 per t...Read More

The London Metal Exchange three-month tin price reached a new 2021 high and was the sole metal to make gains in morning trading on Tuesday February 2, while the rest of the base metals were constrained by a bullish US dollar index following "productive" Covid-19 stimulus plan discussions in the United States. Tin's forward price reached $23,330 per tonne shortly after 9am, a new year-to-date high...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of base metals analysts are ready to view.Aluminium: SHFE tailwind for LME pricesAs we are entering the traditional strong demand season, we expect Chinese aluminium demand to show further recovery, and we expect demand from existing end-user sectors, new infrastructure projects and the export sector to show some increases. As a result, we believe that S...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of base metals analysts are ready to view, including an upgrade to our aluminium price forecasts.Aluminium: Price forecasts raisedWe correctly expected the macro reflationary theme to raise the prices for all base metals but, with it being the base metal with by far the weakest fundamentals, we had expected the price of aluminium to underperform relative...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.These include an increase in our copper mine disruption estimates, upgrades to our production outlook for Indonesian nickel pig iron (NPI), a smaller refined zinc surplus, and an upgrade to our zinc price forecasts.Aluminium: Big disconnect between price and fundamentalsAluminium has extended its uptrend on the London Metal...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view. We also review our price forecasting accuracy for the second quarter 2020.Q2 2020 price forecast performance review According to the results of Fastmarkets' Apex for the second quarter of 2020 published this week, Fastmarkets' base metals research team was the second most accurate price forecaster for nickel (99.06%), lead...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.The conequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on energy demand affected oil and gas prices through much of 2020 and weighed on drilling rates and demand for oil-country tubular goods (OCTG) in most regions.These effects were most likely to continue well into 2021 and perhaps longer, according to Fastmarkets OCTG Intelligence Serv...Read More

https://media.blubrry.com/silverdoctors/p/content.blubrry.com/silverdoctors/DaveKranzlerFeb2021SDaudio.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Email | RSSFrom the Reddit traders thinking they can take on the big bank silver shorts, to silver bullion dealers getting wiped out of their inventory, and to the...Dave Kranzler of Investment Research Dynamics inter...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 major silver shorts just keep shorting...by Chris Powell of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA)So there must be a bad reason.* * *9:30p ET Sunday, January 21, 2021Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:Silver market analyst Ted Butler writes tonight that the major silver futures shorts just keep shorting and then borrowing metal from the exchange-traded fund SLV and leasing it, essentially pilin...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts is ready to view.It was only a couple of months ago that contract buyers of coated steels - represented in large part by market participants from the automotive sector - were grudgingly resigned to paying as much as ?,?100 ($120) per tonne more for their contracted shipments in 2021 compared with in 2020. Increases in contract prices of...Read More

SILVER IS READY TO MOONSHOT!!by Bix Weir of Road to RootaSILVER IS READY TO MOONSHOT!! Read More