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
A free tool can help traders bank big during the upcoming earnings season. Life After Google...Claim your copy here! Too many investors let their portfolios slip during the busy holiday season, but this is a huge mistake... especially with the market moving events just around the corner!With the crazy market action investors have been seeing lately, right now is the time to prepare to bank big w...Read More
The process to exclude steel and aluminium from the Section 232 import tariffs applied by the United States is having some interesting consequences.Notably, in the event of a national security issue - which Section 232 was designed to address - the United States would theoretically rely on Japan for its steel and Saudi Arabia for its aluminium.Those countries have been granted the highest volume o...Read More
Is it time to prepare for the next financial crisis?Something strange is going on in the financial system.And according to The Wall Street Journal, it's causing some investors- including the biggest banks in the world- to move massive amounts of money out of the banking system.What exactly is going on?Former hedge fund manager, Dr. Steve Sjuggerud, one of the most widely-followed financial analys...Read More
Steel billet prices in most of the world's major markets maintained their upward momentum during the week ended Friday February 15 while iron ore and scrap costs continued to go up.The rise in scrap prices followed on from increasing raw materials prices after the fatal accident at an iron ore tailings dam at Vale's Feij??o mine near the city of Brumadinho, in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil.T...Read More
Welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast, I’m Mike Gleason.Coming up Chris Martenson of PeakProsperity.com and famous author of The Crash Crouse and his latest book Prosper! joins me to dissect what’s behind the Yellow Vest movement in France and why the mainstream media and those in power simply don’t want you to know what’s really going on there. Chris also tells...Read More
Here are five Fastmarkets MB stories you might have missed on Friday February 15 that are worth another look.The London Metal Exchange's linked load-in/load-out (LILO) warehouse rule thus far has not been activated at Istim's warehouses in Port Klang, Malaysia, despite a large aluminium queue building at the warehouse, sources confirmed to Fastmarkets MB.Section 232 tariffs on aluminium...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
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
Incontrovertible evidence from yesterday indicates serious violations of monopoly and restraint of trade issues in COMEX silver futures. Ted explains...by Ted Butler via Silver SeekIt's now been four months since the US Department of Justice secured a criminal guilty plea from the former trader from JPMorgan for spoofing and manipulating precious metals prices on the COMEX and three months since t...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
China's month-on-month new electric vehicles (NEV) sales rebounded in August after month-on-month declines in June and July. The drop in sales between May and June was the first drop since September 2016, but Fastmarkets MB had expected Chinese NEV sales to dip temporarily after the June subsidy changes came into effect because consumers and NEV manufacturers would have to adjust to the new subsid...Read More
Iron ore prices fell sharply in the second half of November after climbing through October, with prices for higher-grade material pioneering the decline.Fastmarkets MB daily benchmark for 65% Fe fines dropped by 22% by Monday November 26 after peaking on October 29. The 62% Fe iron ore index declined by 16% over the period, as some Chinese steelmakers started to seek larger volumes of cheaper ores...Read More
The steel scrap sector in the United States still depends on exports to Turkey, a member of the Fastmarkets research team said during the ferrous session at the Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) conference in London.This dependence persists despite the changes in the international markets created by the US' imposition of its Section 232 tariffs on imports of steel products, metals analyst Le...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
Gold futures marked the highest finish in two weeks Friday, as progress in trade talks in the final day of this week's round of U.S.-China trade negotiations was seen as bullish for the yellow metal, overshadowing strength in the dollar and a pick up in global equity markets. Meanwhile, palladium topped $1,400 an ounce to notch a record for futures prices, which settled with a weekly rise of nearl...Read More
This week, Panoramic Resources (ASX:PAN) sent out the first shipment of bulk nickel/copper/cobalt concentrate from its Savannah mine in Western Australia to Lianyungang, China.The shipment is making the news because its contents were produced after Panoramic was able to reopen the mine, which had been placed on care and maintenance in May 2016. The miner was waiting for a recovery in the nickel pr...Read More
Here are five Fastmarkets MB stories you might have missed on Friday February 15 that are worth another look.The London Metal Exchange's linked load-in/load-out (LILO) warehouse rule thus far has not been activated at Istim's warehouses in Port Klang, Malaysia, despite a large aluminium queue building at the warehouse, sources confirmed to Fastmarkets MB.Section 232 tariffs on aluminium...Read More