Trade war relief for metals, but bull-bear battle rages on: Andy Home

News Markets Intelligence Careers Education Buyers Guide News Markets Buyer's Guide Advertise RSS Newsletter The Northern Miner MINING.COM Canadian Mining Journal Sign In Join Profile Sign out Copper Gold Lithium Nickel Commodities Iron Ore Rare Earth Coal Uranium Cobalt Diamond Zinc Platinum Palladium Silver Potash Suppliers Equipment TOP 50 USA Canada Australia Regions Africa China Latin America Europe Asia TNM Maps TNM Marco Polo Reuters | December 3, 2018 | 10:24 am Base Metals China Copper Zinc Image from Wikimedia Commons LONDON – Is it a ceasefire, a truce or the opening to a lasting peace deal? The jury is very much out on exactly what Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agreed during their talks at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires. But for industrial metals it’s enough. Sign Up for the Copper Digest Sign Up The London Metal Exchange (LME) suite of base metals is today enjoying a relief rally after weeks of bludgeoning from bearish funds. Speculators have been running short positions across the board, according to LME broker Marex Spectron. It estimates the spectrum runs from marginal in copper to an extreme 40 percent of open interest in nickel. The LME base metals index has fallen by 14 percent since the start of the year. Macro-driven price weakness has contrasted with positive micro signals from the physical marketplace, particularly falls in visible stocks. This tension has been playing itself out in LME time-spreads, most eye-catchingly in the zinc market, where the premium for cash metal has hit record highs. Any ceasefire in this metallic bear-bull battle is going to be over a lot faster than the 90-day pause before more U.S. tariffs are imposed. Macro headwinds remain The Chinese version of this weekend’s meeting, however, was curiously silent on the 90-day hiatus. Other than noting that “the two sides decided to avoid escalation of trade restrictive measures”, official Chinese news agency Xinhua did not go into many details at all. This narrati...

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