Copper starts stable a week of de-escalation for nickel

The copper experienced a decline of 0.7% in the first hours of this Monday, according to the board of the London Metal Exchange (BML). According to the initial estimate for this week, the raw material was traded at US$4,614 per pound, averaging US$4,509 so far this year, with an increase of 17.8%.

Juan Ortiz Godoy, senior market analyst at XTB Latam, associated the fact that China registered its first two deaths from COVID-19 in more than a year as a result of the worsening of the pandemic caused by the Omicron variant.

“The most affected locality is Jilin where the government decreed confinement for three days starting at midnight on Monday. The upsurge in infections in the Asian giant has reduced the prospects for demand for the red metal,” the specialist remarked.

For its part, the three-month nickel contract on the London Metal Exchange (LME) touched its lower trading limit of 15% on Monday, as traders sold on expectations of falling prices for the metal used for manufacture stainless steel and electric vehicle batteries.

The 15% limit within which nickel can trade from Friday’s closing price of $36,915 a tonne is wider than the previous day’s 12%, and on the same level as other metals, such as copper, aluminum, zinc and lead.

The exchange did not report any technical problems on Monday, after the glitches forced a halt to trading last week.

Nickel price through the roof

According to an Investing report, the LME suspended nickel trading on March 8 after prices soared more than 50% to a record above $100,000 a tonne.

On March 16, it resumed with a 5% trading band on either side of the previous day’s adjusted closing price of $47,986/tonne. Since then, the LME has continued to increase the limit.

Prices are expected to decline to levels on the Shanghai Futures Exchange (ShFE) after adjusting for costs such as transportation, insurance, import duties and other fees. Nickel on the ShFE was trading around 205,670 yuan, or $32,390 a tonne.