Overnight, Natural Gas broke above the $2.00 price level as we expected.  On April 6, 2020, we published our research that Natural Gas was setting up a bottom pattern and that our seasonal analysis suggested April and May should prompt a price rally in Natural Gas pushing price levels above $2.40. The current rally has broken above a price resistance levelnear $2.00 and the rally up to $...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.Aluminium: 'Sell the rally' mentality here to stayAlthough the London Metal Exchange aluminium price has managed to recover modestly from recent lows, we suspect this is mostly short-covering. The lack of producer restraint, growing exchange inventories, a weak demand outlook and the 7 million tonnes of oversupply forecast f...Read More

Bob Moriarty of 321gold discusses economic collapse and gold.I like to read. I read fast and that helps. I can't quite come to grips with all these guys now coming out with 25-minute videos they insist we watch instead of reading. Do they really believe that everyone has so much free time that they can pay attention to someone chattering away for 25 minutes?Most of what you read or watch will be n...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.Aluminium: 4-million-tonne surplus for 2020We have made further downward revisions to our aluminium demand expectations for 2020 and, although there have been smelter capacity reduction in China too, the net effect is that our forecast for the global surplus this year has swelled to 4 million tonnes, from 2.7 million tonnes...Read More

Here's what usually occurs in related financial markets when "big changes in social mood are afoot"Related financial markets tend to move together. For example, gold and silver.Or, consider stocks. When the Dow Industrials are up on agiven trading day, the NASDAQ is usually in the green too. The same applies when the Dow is down. Other major stock indexes tend to close in negative territory as we...Read More

Precious metals markets enter the month of May with somemixed signals near term.  But thelong-term picture continues to look constructive.  All the metals appear to have put in majorbottoms during the panic selling of mid to late March. Barring another wave of virus outbreaks and economiclockdowns, the gradual reopening of state, local, and national economies shouldstart to unleash more...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.Average LME aluminium price down by 2.5% week on weekAlthough LME aluminium began this week on the rebound, prices extended their recent downtrend further last week, approaching the $1,400-per-tonne level. The weekly average LME aluminium cash price was down 2.5% last week to $1,432.50 per tonne from previous week's $1,469.6...Read More

Silver is poweringhigher in a new bull market after getting clobbered in March’s stock panic.  Investors have been flocking back to silverin the aftermath of that ultra-rare extreme-fear event.  That brutal selloff also utterly wiped out speculators’upside bets in silver futures, giving them massive room to buy back in.  After being pummeled to record-low levelsrelative...Read More

10 years ago every “analyst” and his brother was hyping the future price of gold and I kept track of their guesses in an article entitled “Gold Going To $2500, $5000, $10000, Even More? These 148 “Analysts Think/Thought So“. None of their forecasts “panned” out (pun intended) but some are back at it again suggesting that we are going to see gold going as h...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.US flat product prices outperformed our expectations over the past month. In an attempt to lend the market confidence that sheet prices had reached a floor, US steel mills announced price increases of $50-60 per ton at the end of April. In the announcement, mills cited the expectation of higher scrap prices, tight domestic s...Read More

Global markets are contracting in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the prices for flat steel products continue to retreat, with prices for coated steels down by a further 5% since late March in most of the markets that Fastmarkets tracks.The latest edition of Fastmarkets' Galvanized Steel and Tinplate Market Tracker, for April 2020, is now available to view.Further price falls are almost cer...Read More

April marks a second month of truly extraordinary developmentsin markets – from negatively priced crude oil futures to a record spike inunemployment claims to a lockdown-defying rally in stocks. The financial media is touting the S&P 500’s surge of morethan 13% in April – the biggest one-month gain for the index since 1974. While stock market investors have made up a big chu...Read More

Negative oil prices isanother corona consequences that no one saw coming. A 30% drop in world oil demand due to the corona lockdown's resulting in demand falling to 70m barrels per day, whilst the producers are pumping out over 90mbd meant that storage faculties had become saturated, thus nowhere to transport new supply to. What actually triggered the collapse was the expiry of May NYMEX oil futur...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.Despite these unprecedented times, US sheet prices moved in line with our expectations over the past month. While we maintain our view on the direction of pricing during 2020 and the length of the pricing downturn, as the Covid-19 crisis deepens we have increased the magnitude of the price declines through the second quarter...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.As oil price stumbles, outlook for welded markets weakensIn February, oil prices, already hit by the economic slowdown in Asia, turned lower on the failure of OPEC+ to reach an agreement on production cuts. This was enough to shake oil markets, but the collapse of global demand due to the pandemic has driven Brent below $30/...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.The Covid-19 pandemic and the associated impacts on steel production, mining and manufacturing activity, end-use consumption, and trade and transportation continue to dominate ferro-alloy markets. US steel mills are operating at around 50% of capacity, with similarly low operating rates evident in Europe as well. Chinese ste...Read More

Ferro-alloys prices have generally retreated over the past month, with demand concerns gaining in prominence.The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.Ferro-alloy pricing trends have generally diverged ove the past month, depending on the security of the supply-side position of the market. With most supply concerns fading with the resumption of industrial activity i...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.This month's key ferro-alloy forecast highlights:While the ferro-alloy industry's initial response to the Covid-19 outbreak was marked by rising prices primarily in response to supply-side concerns, focus has now shifted somewhat. As Chinese activity slowly returns to more normal levels, for alloys with a strong Chinese prod...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.Activity in China has picked up, and although the impact from the Covid-19 did not spare the country with its gross domestic product contracting at its largest rate since recording began in the 1990s, the latest crude steel output figures for April from China's National Bureau of Statistics show a strong recovery, albeit sti...Read More

The latest forecasts from Fastmarkets' team of analysts are ready to view.The first quarter continued the trend of 2019 - for China to actively import relatively cheap metallics and semi-finished steel - but can this be sustained? The answer to this question will come down to the price competitiveness of the products, we believe. One additional incentive to continue to import metallics this year -...Read More