Seaborne iron ore prices were up on Monday amid the gradual return of workers after the extended lunar new year holiday in China.
The European Commission has initiated a review of existing safeguard measures into a number of imported steel products, it said on Saturday February 15.
The market of last resort has just re-ignited the copper cash-and-carry trade in China for the first time since 2018. Shanghai Futures Exchange copper futures have been trading in a deep contango following the delivery of 106,959 tonnes of copper cathodes onto the SHFE over the past two weeks, the biggest fortnightly inflow on records stretching back to 2003.
The three-month copper price on the London Metal Exchange topped gains across the base-metals complex despite low trading volumes on Monday, while zinc gathered momentum over the afternoon but remained rangebound.
China’s output and sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs) fell by more than 50% year-on-year in January 2020. The country produced 40,000 NEVs in January 2020, down by 55.4% compared with January 2019, according to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM).