With gold prices up at near six-year highs, markets remain nervous on Wednesday August 28 about just how much damage the United States-China trade war is doing and whether it will be reversible before it leads to a global recession.

What metal stories and price moves have been on the agenda? Metal Bulletin editor Alex Harrison reviews the week

Rising energy costs will be a key driver of base metals prices in the coming year, Ed Meir, senior commodity analyst at INTL FCStone told Metal Bulletin.

In MB’s latest poll on future copper prices, 55% of respondents forecast that three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange will be above $8,000 per tonne by the end of this month. But even as traders on the LME talked of the upward momentum in base metals, copper prices have plunged twice in recent days. Prices fell sharply on Tuesday and again on Thursday, when moves on the Shanghai Futures Exchange were so sharp and sudden that they took traders in Asia aback. To them, for a short time, it looked like the flash crash that galvanized US equity dealers earlier this year.

Markets remain nervous on Thursday August 29, especially since the next wave of US tariff increases on Chinese goods are set to come into effect on September 1 and the US yield curve is showing the deepest inversion since 2007, with the 30-year yield falling to a historic low on Wednesday.

With the exception of lead, base metals prices on the Shanghai Futures Exchange were down during Asian morning trading on Tuesday September 4, with rising trade tensions and disappointing economic data from China dampening market sentiment.

Fastmarkets will cease the daily publication of its physical arbitrage for imports of copper, aluminium, zinc and nickel into China from April 1, 2019. The data will still appear in Fastmarkets’ price book on a daily basis as usual, however.

Base metals prices on the Shanghai Futures Exchange were broadly down during Asian morning trading on Monday September 17, with the complex pressured by weak Chinese macroeconomic data and trade war concerns.

Teck Resources expects to remove partial force majeure on its germanium output after the fourth-quarter restart of one of the fuming furnaces at its zinc and lead smelting and refining complex, Trail Operations.

Base metals prices on the London Metal Exchange were for the most part stronger on the morning of Tuesday May 8, with all the metals, except tin (-0.7%), up by an average of 0.7%. Zinc led the advance with a 1% gain and copper was up by 0.2% at $6,858 per tonne.