It is an unusual occurrence when a note of caution about the copper market emanates from the annual Cesco retreat and wellness meeting, but one has.

Cowering since the start of 2009, then cudgelled from June, the red bear has been knocked out of the ring so often that he may well be dead — lying under the vast pile of documents that forecast a deficit this year.

Elected officials in Robeson County, N.C., have voted in favor of more stringent requirements impacting metals recyclers. The new rules, which essentially mirror state laws, go into effect next month.

Soaring prices and rising demand for metals ensured high spirits in Cape Town last week as delegates gathered for the 2011 Investing in African Mining Indaba

The Metal Bulletin APEX is a unique system of combining the best research and analysis in metals prices to create the most accurate forecast available in the market. Metal Bulletin utilises analyst and market participant forecasts and combines them in a way that reflects the past performance of each analyst/desk. Analysts and desks which consistently call the market better in both the short-term and long-term than their peers are weighted higher in the model, and the leading analysts/desks for each metal are identified at the end of each quarter.

Glencore International and Credit Suisse have agreed to terminate their strategic alliance and replace it with a licensing and consultancy deal, Glencore told MB

I wonder how the profitability of London Metal Exchange brokers has been affected by all the changes in the market over recent years.

Fraudsters have been using base metals such as tungsten to exploit unwary gold investors with counterfeits and scams, the director of the International Chamber of Commerce’s Counterfeiting Intelligence Bureau has claimed

Physically-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in base metals will not affect prices in the medium to long term because investors will sell back to the market if tightness appears, according to research by Goldman Sachs

Now that the dust has settled on another LME week, perhaps it’s worth having a look at some of the topics that were exercising the industry’s minds in London last week. The one area where there seemed to be almost total agreement was that prices still seem to be locked in a bull phase. But don’t get me wrong; that doesn’t mean everybody I chatted with was rampagingly bullish. Alongside those who take the view that commodity asset values can only go up, I found a surprising number who, almost despairingly, agreed that standing in front of the freight train of the current market was not an option.