Other Commodities
The London Metals Exchange – ground zero for a massive “short squeeze” in nickel, which ultimately saw the exchange cancel an unprecedented $3.9 billion in trades last fall – was just “rocked” by a new nickel scandal last month (from Bloomberg on March 17)…
The London Metal Exchange has discovered bags of stones instead of the nickel that underpinned a handful of its contracts at a warehouse in Rotterdam, in a revelation that will deliver another blow to confidence in the embattled exchange. The amount of metal represents just 0.14% of live nickel inventories on the LME, worth about
Ironically, it turns out the missing metals (rocks) in question were owned by none other than JPMorgan Chase, which itself played a role in the prior scandal and has long been rumored to manipulate metals markets (from Bloomberg on March 20)…
JPMorgan was the owner of the nine invalidated contracts, according to people familiar with the matter. The bank registered the bags of material as being deliverable against LME contracts in early 2022, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. There’s no suggestion that JPMorgan did anything wrong. The material was
Copper is the “missing ingredient” of the anticipated “energy transition” (from The Economist on March 30)…
At 76, Richard Adkerson is an elder statesman of the copper industry. For two decades he has been CEO of Freeport-McMoRan, one of the world’s biggest copper producers, valued at $55bn. He has seen it all, from short-term booms and busts to the China-led supercycle, and from industry fragmentation to consolidation. Freeport itself has pioneered
Western governments’ “net zero” initiatives would require a metals mining boom (from the Wall Street Journal on April 12)…
California made a stunning decision last year—that by 2035 all new cars sold in the state must have at least 2½ times as much copper as conventional cars today. That’s not literally what the mandate said, of course, but it’s the practical effect of ordering all cars to be electric in the next 12 years.
Copper supplies have fallen to 18-year lows despite the recent tightening in credit conditions (from Bloomberg on April 16)…
The copper industry isn’t letting tightening credit and slowing growth kill the buzz heading into one of its biggest annual gatherings. Underpinning the quiet confidence of executives, bankers and traders drifting into the Chilean capital for Cesco Week are the lowest stockpiles of the metal in 18 years — standing at less than a week’s