Industrial metals: Another weak start to the week
by David Fleschen
This week is also going to be rough: at the start, copper falls 5% below USD 4,600 per ton. It is burdened by the continuing bad news about the corona virus. In many countries there are more and more restrictions on public life and production is being shut down in many places. This also means that industrial raw materials such as copper and energy sources are much less in demand. In addition, the US Congress has not yet been able to agree on the extensive stimulus measures required by the Trump administration, which does not help to calm the market participants. Today, this should be voted on.
All of this is once again noticeable in sharply falling equity markets - both in Asia and Europe as well as in US futures trading. It doesn't help that company activities in China start up again. In addition to copper, there is currently pressure above all on tin: it is falling this morning by over 7% below USD 13,000 a ton and is trading at its lowest level since mid-2009. The tin price had already dropped by 12.5% last week. The world's largest tin producer from Indonesia had announced that it would temporarily cut its production and exports because many consumers would have stopped producing it and there was currently no demand for tin. Incidentally, the London Metal Exchange (LME) will cease traditional ring trading from today and will continue to switch to purely electronic trading until further notice to protect traders from the corona virus.
Source: Commerzbank Research, Photo: Fotolia