SHANGHAI, Apr 19 (SMM) – China will ban imports of 16 more scrap metal and chemical waste products from December 31, 2018, according to release by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) on Wednesday April 19. This includes Category Seven copper scrap materials, such as waste electric motors, that account for two-thirds of China's imports of copper scrap. W...Read More
SHANGHAI, Apr 19 (SMM) – China will ban imports of 16 more scrap metal and chemical waste products from December 31, 2018, according to release by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) on Wednesday April 19. This includes Category Seven copper scrap materials, such as waste electric motors, that account for two-thirds of China's imports of copper scrap. W...Read More
SHANGHAI, Apr 19 (SMM) – Taiwan will undertake anti-dumping anti-subsidy investigations on certain steel products imported from China, according to China’s Ministry of Commerce.The anti-subsidy investigation would include cold-roll carbon, hot-rolled stainless steel, galvanised and zinc alloy flat-rolled steel, carbon steel plate and cold-rolled stainless steel, while the anti-dumping...Read More
SHANGHAI, Apr 19 (SMM) – This is a roundup of global macroeconomic news last night and what is expected today.Last nightThe US dollar inched up slightly overnight, buoyed by the rise in US treasury yield rate and the upbeat economic growth.Base metals rose across the board. LME aluminium hit a fresh high since August 2011 with a 5.7% increase. LME nickel surged close to 7% and hit a three-ye...Read More
Kester Clarke, assistant professor of metallurgical and materials engineering at Colorado School of Mines, has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for work to improve the fundamental understanding of advanced high-strength steel, research that could ultimately help make automobiles safer and more fuel efficient. The project, "Controlling Austenite Stability and Response During De...Read More
SHANGHAI, Apr 19 (SMM) – This is a roundup of global macroeconomic news last night and what is expected today.Last nightThe US dollar inched up slightly overnight, buoyed by the rise in US treasury yield rate and the upbeat economic growth.Base metals rose across the board. LME aluminium hit a fresh high since August 2011 with a 5.7% increase. LME nickel surged close to 7% and hit a three-ye...Read More
Saturday last we offended the pieties.We reckoned that democracies - being shortsighted - tend toward vast accumulations of debt.In response, reader Tom B. dealt with us as follows:The committed ignorance of pseudointellectual arrogance and their refusal to take an economics class on the uses of the FIAT dollar is stunning! It's the reason Warren Buffet [sic] smiles every time "financial experts"...Read More
SHANGHAI, Apr 19 (SMM) – LME nickel prices jumped 7% overnight and hit a high of $15,875/mt, marking a record high since 2015 on declining inventory, US sanctions against Russia and downstream demand from the new-energy vehicle industry.SMM believes nickel prices will see an even stronger upward momentum as LME inventory continued to decrease. As of April 17, inventory stood at 314,454...Read More
SHANGHAI, Apr 19 (SMM) –Copper: A strong LME copper provided support to SHFE copper overnight. Technically, LME copper stood above 10-day moving average and tested above the 60-day moving average. It is likely to trade at $7,000-7,060/mt with the SHFE 1805 contract at 51,500-52,000 yuan/mt today. As prices of futures gained, spot prices offered are likely to dip with premiums expected a...Read More
SHANGHAI, Apr 19 (SMM) –Copper: A strong LME copper provided support to SHFE copper overnight. Technically, LME copper stood above 10-day moving average and tested above the 60-day moving average. It is likely to trade at $7,000-7,060/mt with the SHFE 1805 contract at 51,500-52,000 yuan/mt today. As prices of futures gained, spot prices offered are likely to dip with premiums expected a...Read More
SHANGHAI, Apr 19 (SMM) – This is a roundup of global macroeconomic news last night and what is expected today.Last nightThe US dollar inched up slightly overnight, buoyed by the rise in US treasury yield rate and the upbeat economic growth.Base metals rose across the board. LME aluminium hit a fresh high since August 2011 with a 5.7% increase. LME nickel surged close to 7% and hit a three-ye...Read More
SHANGHAI, Apr 19 (SMM) –Copper: A strong LME copper provided support to SHFE copper overnight. Technically, LME copper stood above 10-day moving average and tested above the 60-day moving average. It is likely to trade at $7,000-7,060/mt with the SHFE 1805 contract at 51,500-52,000 yuan/mt today. As prices of futures gained, spot prices offered are likely to dip with premiums expected a...Read More
Iron and steel imports handled by the Port of Antwerp in Belgium fell by 9.9% year on year in the first quarter of 2018, the port authority said this week.Imports from China were down "sharply in comparison with the first quarter of 2017, although this decline - which first became apparent in the second quarter of last year - has now stabilized," the port authority said.Exports from...Read More
Import prices for stainless steel in East Asia maintained their upward momentum over the past week, with rapidly rising production costs resulting in higher Chinese offers.Metal Bulletin's assessment of prices for benchmark 304 stainless 2mm trimmed cold-rolled coil was $2,150-2,230 per tonne cif East Asian ports for the week ended Wednesday April 18, narrowing upward by $50 per tonne from a week...Read More
ZK International Group intends to build a new mill in its native China, to capture a larger share of the demand for stainless and carbon steel pipe that is vitally needed for water and natural gas transmission in the nation's immense infrastructure build-out.ZK also may seek acquisitions of existing pipe-making facilities while it attempts to quintuple production within about three years. The...Read More
Earlier this week, we talked about Social Security and Medicare taxes ... including how much of your income they eat up.But just as a reminder: Social Security alone takes 12.4% of every American's income up to a total limit of $15,921.60 in 2018.That's a lot of money.Of course, many people are okay with the whole process because they expect to collect back out of the system when they retire.There...Read More
Why do publicly traded companies have a Board of Directors?The answer is to represent and protect the interests of the shareholders who collectively own that company.A key responsibility of the Board is appointing a CEO to run the company for shareholders and then monitoring the job that the CEO does.Unfortunately, quite often the Boards of our publicly traded companies act as little more than ...Read More
Alumina prices stabilized at higher levels on Thursday April 19, while the market digested recent sharp gains and awaited the results of two spot tenders in the Pacific. Metal Bulletin's daily fob Australia alumina index settled at $672.50 per tonne today, unchanged from the previous day's calculation. Spot prices are up 41% from a week ago, after concerns over tight supplies of the raw mater...Read More
Base metal prices were lower on the London Metal Exchange at the close of trading on Thursday April 19, despite aluminium volumes reaching a record-high 41,000 lots.Both nickel and aluminium's three-month prices soared to multi-year highs during the day, but closed on a downward move. Nickel's intraday price difference surpassed Wednesday's record of $1,670 per tonne, reaching $1,810 per tonn...Read More
The export market for CIS-origin pig iron has shown signs of falling due to the weakening scrap market, sources have told Metal Bulletin."The scrap price in the US domestic market is likely to go down in May," a trader said. "But what is more important now is that the scrap price in Turkey is falling - that is a strong indicator for the pig iron market."Metal Bulletin's export price assessment for...Read More