(IDEX Online) - Eight suspects have been arrested over an attempted gem heist in which smoke bombs caused panic among the crowds at St Mark's Square, in Venice.Visitors feared a terror attack was under way when the raiders struck in March 2017.It soon became clear the confusion was a cover for an attempted robbery at a high-end jewelry store.A tourist alerted police and the raiders - at least...Read More

The government of China is now acting on announcements it made in the week ended June 18 about intended sales of the country's metal reserves, which triggered a dramatic decline in prices.China's National Food & Strategic Reserves Administration (SRA) released notices on Tuesday June 22 that it intended to sell 20,000 tonnes of copper, 30,000 tonnes of zinc and 50,000 tonnes of aluminium in an ini...Read More

Several idled aluminium smelters are scheduled to resume operations soon following a strong aluminum price on the Shanghai Futures Exchange, Fastmarkets was told on Tuesday June 22.One long-term idled aluminium smelter in Qinghai province - located in the northwest of China - has been checking its operation lines recently with an aim to restart the plant at the beginning of the third quarter, seve...Read More

A summary of China's base metal imports for May 2021.Copper ore and concentrateMay total: 1.95 million tonnes, up by 1.2% month on month, up by 15.1% year on yearRefined copperMay total: 291,378 tonnes, down by 8.7% month on month, down by 4.7% year on yearCopper scrapMay total: 139,444 tonnes, down by 16.9% month on month, up by 100.8% year on yearBauxiteMay total:...Read More

Nickel continued to experience the strongest rebound on the London Metal Exchange on the morning of Tuesday June 22, while most metals also trended upward following last week's slumps. Nickel was up by 1.6% at 9am on Tuesday, at $17,730 per tonne. This adds to a 1.7% gain at the end of Monday, when the contract closed at $17,450 per tonne. The stainless steel additive was back to levels seen a wee...Read More

The automotive industry is rapidly evolving toward an autonomous and electric future, and steel is well-prepared to grow alongside it, representatives from Nucor and Cleveland-Cliffs said during a panel at Fastmarkets' 2021 Steel Success Strategies Industry Briefing.Steel "offers an enormous combination of solutions that are easily implemented into the next version of vehicles," Dan Gordon, senior...Read More

Consumers have to accept a green premium in order to achieve net-zero emissions targets in the steel sector, Steel Dynamics Inc (SDI) president and chief executive officer Mark Millett said during a keynote address on Monday June 21 at Fastmarkets' 2021 Steel Success Strategies Industry Briefing."Otherwise it won't work," Millett said, adding that "net zero remains aspirational for now," and that...Read More

Hot-rolled coil prices in the United States rose for a third consecutive business day after market participants said tonnage on the spot market may be scarce for at least the duration of the summer. Fastmarkets' daily steel hot-rolled coil index, fob mill US was calculated at $84.98 per hundredweight ($1,699.60 per short ton) on Tuesday June 22, an increase of 0.69% from $84.40 per cwt on Monday b...Read More

The export market for hot-rolled coil from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) has softened in the week to Tuesday June 22 because suppliers have been cutting offers to attract buyers.Fastmarkets' weekly price assessment for steel hot-rolled coil, export, fob Black Sea, CIS was $980-995 per tonne on June 22, down from $995-1,020 per tonne one week previously.HRC offers from Ukraine were r...Read More

Huntsman Set to Expand Nickel Sulphide Discovery at CanegrassSPONSOREDhuntsman explorationThe two companies agreed last month to move forward with a third year of generative funding for copper exploration in Sonora, with a budget of US$1.3 million.Riverside said at the time the funding was part of a larger overall package relating to a portfolio of assets the pair had generated over five district...Read More

Huntsman Set to Expand Nickel Sulphide Discovery at CanegrassSPONSOREDhuntsman explorationThe company said the openpit contained known fault zones and it was implementing measures to manage production risks "in a localised area of Phase 10"."This additional caution while mining in the Phase 10 fault zone areas will remove ore from this phase of mining, impact productivity and result in less ore pr...Read More

The Turkish steel mills have been staying away from deep-sea scrap purchases because of weak rebar sales and a sufficiency of scrap stocks, market participants told Fastmarkets on Tuesday June 22.The most recent deals were heard on June 15, when two United States-origin cargoes were sold.A mill in the Marmara region bought those cargoes, which comprised HMS 1&2 (80:20) at $500 and $501 per tonne,...Read More

Seaborne premium hard coking coal prices continued to rise in the cfr market due to tight supplies, while prices were largely stable in the fob market, with market participants adopting a wait-and-see attitude, sources told Fastmarkets on Tuesday June 22.Fastmarkets indicesPremium hard coking coal, fob DBCT: $177.87 per tonne, up $0.59 per tonnePremium hard coking coal, cfr Jingtang: $290.19 per t...Read More

Iron ore prices rose on Tuesday June 22, and there was market chatter about the potential resumption of blast furnace operations and the easing of emissions restrictions in Tangshan, sources told Fastmarkets.Fastmarkets iron ore indices 62% Fe fines, cfr Qingdao: $214.32 per tonne, up $6.17 per tonne62% Fe low-alumina fines, cfr Qingdao: $216.00 per tonne, up $6 per tonne58% Fe fines high-grade pr...Read More

Mr Xu Kuangdi, the former president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said at a symposium on Monday June 21 that using scrap in steelmaking would be an "effective and realistic" way for China to achieve carbon neutrality in the steel sector and it should be "strongly encouraged" nationwide, sources said.The symposium was organized by the China Iron & Steel Association (Cisa) for the national...Read More

China imported 111,432 tonnes of steel scrap in May, surpassing the total of 109,978 tonnes of its imports of the steelmaking raw material in the first four months of 2021, according to the latest Chinese customs data.Last month's imports are also 56% higher than those imported in April.Of the total, 79,327 tonnes - or 71.2% - originated in Japan. South Korea remained China's second-largest scrap...Read More

The federal funds rate remains glued at zero... as Mr. Powell and his fellows announced this afternoon.Yet is the Federal Reserve wobbling on its forecast of "transitory" inflation? Does it now fear an enduring inflationary menace?Today they mumbled the "transitory" line again.Yet their "dot plot" suggests two rate hikes in 2023. In March, they plotted no increases until 2024.James McCann, deputy...Read More

For years, currency analysts (myself included) have looked for signs of an international monetary "reset" that would diminish the dollar's role as the leading reserve currency and replace it with a substitute, which would be agreed upon at some Bretton Woods-style monetary conference.Now, it looks like the move towards the long-expected Great Reset is accelerating.At the recent G7 summit in the UK...Read More

I've written for years about different nations' persistent efforts to dethrone the U.S. dollar as the leading global reserve currency and the main medium of exchange.At the same time, I've said that such processes don't happen overnight; instead, they happen slowly and incrementally over decades.The dollar displaced sterling as the leading reserve currency in the twentieth century, but it took t...Read More

Since the word inflation is so loaded, let’s use the more neutral (and more accurate) term, decline in purchasing power: an hour of your labor buys fewer goods and services of lesser quality than it did a decade ago or a generation ago.While the conventional discussion focuses on monetary inflation, i.e. expansion of money supply, the real rip-your-face-off sources have nothing to do with mo...Read More