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Nickel’s outright price on the LME was recently seen at $13,840 per tonne, down from an intra-morning high of $14,280 per tonne.
Turnover was moderately high in nickel, with more than 3,500 lots exchanged as of 9am London time.
Pressuring the metal’s price lower were further stock inflows; the one this morning takes total inflows this week to above 13,000 tonnes, the bulk of which was delivered into LME-registered warehouses in Europe and Asia.
Meanwhile, forward spreads in LME nickel have narrowed slightly, with the metal’s benchmark cash/three-month spread recently seen in a $66.50-pe-tonne contango, shrinking from $72 per tonne on Thursday.
“If current events spook investors into squaring up equity portfolios, the fall in equity prices could well be spectacular and metals will not be able to survive that short-term storm even if the physical demand picture is starting to improve,” Kingdom Futures director and chief executive Malcolm Freeman said in a morning report, referring to a United States-led airstrike in Baghdad this morning that has caused both oil and gold prices to surge.
Elsewhere, the three-month tin price dipped below nearby resistance over the morning session, recently trading at $16,915 per tonne.
Over December, LME tin stocks climbed to their highest level in over a year at 7,125 tonnes, with price action now beginning to correct accordingly via a 1.5% drop this morning.
LME tin’s cash/three-month spread continues to flip between contango and backwardation, keeping investors cautious. The spread was recently seen in a $1-per-tonne contango.
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