Base metals prices were pausing and precious metals were mainly on a back footing this morning, Friday January 8, with sentiment generally bullish on the prospects for greater fiscal spending out of the United States when Joe Biden becomes the president in a few weeks’ time.

Freight Investor Services (FIS) completed the first brokered trade of the CME Group’s cash-settled cobalt futures contract on Thursday January 7, the company told Fastmarkets.

Global palm oil prices are expected to remain firm in the first quarter of 2021 as supply will only recover later in the year...

Markets remained upbeat on the morning of Thursday January 7 despite the outbreak of violence in Washington, DC, with nickel joining copper and tin in setting fresh new multi-month highs but gold turning lower.

Fastmarkets is proposing to launch a weekly import price assessment for steel billet on a cfr China basis.

Markets seem to be anticipating a Democratic win in the Georgia Senate run-off this morning, Wednesday January 6, and that could be bullish for commodities because a Democratic-controlled US Congress could push through larger fiscal stimulus packages.

Fastmarkets is proposing to launch a new daily China ferrous scrap import price assessment to enhance its growing editorial coverage of the Asian market for the steelmaking raw material.

Global silico-manganese output dropped by 4.5% month on month in November 2020 to 1.5 million tonnes, due to production cuts in Asia and the Commonwealth of Independent States region, according to the latest data from the International Manganese Institute (IMnI).

Strong gains were seen across the base metals on the London Metal Exchange at the start of the week and most of the metals in London and all the metals on the Shanghai Futures Exchange were up again this morning, Tuesday January 5.

The new year has started with optimism in the air and base metals prices on the London Metal Exchange and Shanghai Futures Exchange were up by an average of 1.8% and 1.4% respectively this morning, Monday January 14.