Gold has big year in 2020 and outlook for this year robust. Learn about monetary expansion and gold future prices.Read More

The gold futures price reached US$1,767/ounce this week before retreating, which was the second time it has surpassed US$1,760 in the past two months, marking some of gold's highest levels in several years.Read More

The recent uptick in traded option volatilities in the London Metal Exchange copper market has faded as the month-end draws near, while what is likely to be an unexciting August expiry this Wednesday looks like setting a marker for the rest of the summer. Front-month at-the-money (ATM) copper volatility has dipped back to just under 20%, having climbed above 26% on August 19 - the best since early...Read More

The commodities most affected so far by the trade spat between China and the United states are soybeans, steel and aluminium - but what if the list were extended in China to cover copper, namely concentrates and scrap?The deliberate addition of tariffs on imports of US copper into the world's largest consumer of the metal sounds somewhat contradictory. Why would China, which imported more than hal...Read More

The London Metal Exchange is to roll out implied pricing across its key base metals contracts from the end of July in a bid to capture growth in copper volumes from Asia, and particularly from China. Earlier on Tuesday, the exchange said it would offer implied pricing for aluminium, copper, lead, nickel, tin and zinc starting from 30 July. The rollout is designed to be dynamic, with the exchange t...Read More

Gold futures booked a second straight finish in positive territory as the U.S. dollar and government bond yields both retreated, providing support for bullion. "Gold trades higher for a second day as trade tensions between the U.S. and China escalate and the recent dollar rally looks tired," said Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy with Saxo Bank. December gold GCZ8, -0.01% added $2.70, or 0....Read More

The price movements of base metals on the London Metal Exchange were mixed at the close of trading on Thursday August 9, typified by sharp drops in the prices of aluminium and nickel, while copper found support despite two consecutive days of stock inflows....Read More

Comex copper prices hit a one-week high Thursday August 9 morning in the US amid a general technical increase across the base metals complex....Read More

China's hot-rolled coil prices fell on Thursday August 9, dragged down by low demand....Read More

Although base metals are under pressure in the short term, we have a bullish bias to our 2018 price forecasts given the supportive background of solid global economic growth and the fact that all six base metal markets look set to be in fundamental deficit this year. But each has a slightly different supply-side story and this aspect should be the main differentiator. For example, zinc's narrative...Read More

Despite Chinese winter smelter production cuts generally falling short of expectations and domestic stocks continuing to climb - both of which suggest the market remains far more comfortably supplied at this point than aluminium bulls had been anticipating - prices still rallied into the year-end to reach $2,290/tonne for the first time since March 2012.And after a New Year pull-back the strength...Read More

Copper prices were working lower during most of December and in the absence of any bullish triggers we had been expecting that trend to continue. But in late December, fund buying picked up aggressively, driving prices to a fresh multi-year high of $7,203/tonne. There was little fundamental justification for this and we should consider it a warning that speculators and investors feeling optimistic...Read More

Lead prices remain on their steady uptrend since the summer lows last year and in January have been eroding resistance around October's 6-year high above $2,600/tonne. We expect the underlying strengthening fundamentals, especially on the supply side, to maintain the uptrend this year. Primary producers may well struggle to respond to higher lead prices and we doubt there is much hoarded scrap aro...Read More

The Indian government's plans of hitting 300 million tonnes of steel capacity by 2030 sounds overambitious in the current scenario given that output only managed to reach the 101 million tonne mark in 2017 - indicating three-fold (Read More

After suffering for some seven years through to 2015, the world's steelmakers have had cause for cheer over the past couple of years. After some heavy losses and write-downs, they finally appear to have emerged from the wreckage of the global financial crisis. An economic upswing has taken root in most regions of the world, Chinese steel output and export growth has slowed noticeably, and steel pr...Read More

For a number of years problems at Ilva, the largest steelworks in Europe, have been casting shadow over the performance of the whole Italian steel industry. Will an acquisition of Ilva by a consortium led by ArcelorMittal, now in its final stage, be a game changer for the market?Following multiple reports of environmental and health problems caused by the Taranto plant, in 2013 Ilva was placed und...Read More

CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGEThe chart looks at the price patterns of the Aussie Dollar over the past 20-years.The trend on the AU$ is up over the past couple of decades and it is down since peaking back in 2011.The decline of late has the AU$ testing 17-year rising support and the apex of a potential bullish falling wedge at the same time.Should the AU$ happen to hold at support and break above resis...Read More

China ended steel production in all of the country's illegal induction furnaces by the end of June last year, it ha claimed.Most operators in China are primarily small private mills that use low-quality scrap to produce substandard rebar. This is mixed with grade III (HRB400) rebar and sold at a discount to construction contractors.For a long period, the government had neither a record of nor cont...Read More

Seaborne pig iron has become relatively competitive versus ferrous scrap over the past year in most regions, and China is no exception. As the first chart below illustrates, the gap between the MBR's proxy for imported pig iron price in China and the Metal Bulletin's Chinese domestic heavy melt scrap price assessment had shrunk by late 2017. The premium averaged $17 per tonne this year to date, co...Read More

The closure of some induction furnaces in China in 2016 followed by the government's crackdown on all unlicensed IFs in mid-2017 freed up some scrap volumes, albeit arguably of low-quality material. Chinese domestic scrap prices came under pressure from the increased supply, which prevented them from keeping pace with the rise in steel and other raw material markets in the fourth quarter of 2016;...Read More

About a year ago, metallurgical coal embarked on a long journey of great volatility and disruption. It emerged as the best performing commodity in 2016 after several years of declining prices. Prices have dropped and spiked several times since then and the volatility continued in 2017 with a cyclone disrupting the market and eventually also affecting the way the commodity is priced. Although therm...Read More

LUSAKA, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Vedanta Resources' Zambian unit said on Thursday work at its Konkola Copper Mine was stopped after one miner was killed in an underground accident to allow for investigations into the incident, the company said. In July production was halted at the same shaft, shaft 4, after a miner died in an accident.Vedanta said in June it planned to double copper production at Konkola...Read More