Nickel Plunges in Metals Selloff as Mood Turns Sour in Shanghai
This note by Mark Burton for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here it is in full:
Nickel slumped by the most in almost two months as a late-night selloff in Chinese metals spilled over to the London Metal Exchange.
Prices dropped as much as 5.9 percent to $11,755 a metric ton, the biggest drop since September. A slump that big has happened only a handful of times in the past five years.
Nickel bore the brunt of selling in metals, with volumes traded electronically surpassing aluminum, usually the LME’s most liquid contract. The slump came after data showing weaker Chinese industrial production and fixed-asset investment.
Stock markets have at least paused and outside of Wall Street are increasingly engaged in mean reversion. That evolving risk-off environment took its toll on commodities today with oil copper and nickel pulling back.
Perhaps the bigger question is the extent to which they succeed in demonstrating support in the region of their respective trend means following these pullbacks. If they fall slower than they rose and bounce emphatically that would support the medium-term bullish argument.