Most metals on the key London Metals Exchange were down on concerns that China demand is weakening and many companies had stockpiled inventory prior to the Chinese New Year. US demand was just a bit stronger and US inventory was lower – a sign that future demand in the US should be positive for stocks. US [...]
Typical swings in an aggressivetrading market are cyclical, and there is usually a sell-off just days after anupswing. But once in a while, we see moves in something like copper and know thatbusinesses are going to have to deal with higher commodity and parts prices as aresult. So, we went digging to try and get [...]
Alcoa helped to rattle global industrial metals markets today by announcing that it would “permanently” shutter or close about 12% of its smelting production capacity to try and bolster falling aluminum prices (by reducing industry capacity). One of the challenges in understanding what is happening worldwide with regard to industrial metals is to see new [...]
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi helped markets move from the Euro and many commodities and into the dollar. Everything from gold, silver, copper, palladium, and most grains and industrial metals fell today as the dollar gained strength. Even oil fell on currency pressure (not supply or demand direct pressure) – both Brent and WTI [...]
Copper and steel both inched higher on Tuesday (copper up 1.5%) as two different outlooks weighed on the commodities markets. We saw that the Rupee lost a lot of ground to global currencies as international investors jumped to the dollar as a safe haven prior to a long holiday weekend. With the Rupee falling, Indian [...]
Iron Ore has started to recover from its 31% fall in October. For the month of November, the commodity is up nearly 26% on the month already, a recovery being spurred by demand in China. We saw some of this in 2009 when commodity prices had plummeted in the early days after the Lehman event. [...]
Problems with steel demand driving prices lower in Europe and rising raw material prices have hit one of the largest steel producers in the world. Tata Steel profits fell more than 89% for its fiscal second quarter which ended on September 30th. Coking coal is a specialized coal used in refining iron ore into finished [...]
Reuters reported today on a possible falling out between a top steel union in Germany and up to 60 different steel producers in the country. Depending on whether they can reach[This content is for MEMBERS ONLY. Please Subscribe to continue.]
This makes perfect sense. There are three basic, main components to steel production (over-generalization here). Iron ore, coking coal, and scrap metal go into most steel production units. Tokyo steel announced that it would reduce its price for scrap steel to the broader market. Well, unfortunately, the country has a lot of it to market [...]
US Steel sent a clear message to the street today, announcing that it expects steel demand (flat roll steel), to be weaker in the fourth quarter as US economic [This content is for MEMBERS ONLY. Please Subscribe to continue.]
