Feedback from LME Week in London

Recording date: 26th October 2022
Nickel prices back over $22,000 as LME inventories drift down.
As one trader said nickel now is simply “buy towards $20K, sell towards $25K” - we’ve been rangebound for more than 4 months.
Will we get out of this range and which direction? generally the longer the range, the bigger the bump when finally get out. If we get one more week of similar data out of China, I will be calling a “turning point” (and also giving up on one more sell-off by year-end.
Stainless prices up another 4-5% this week, stainless inventories continue to decline, even ore and NPI prices ticked up and on battery side, sulphate discount to pure nickel has declined significantly as premiums for briquette/pure nickel declined meaningfully (this is expected - as enough matte consumption capacity built, should clear market and LME prices and MHP/matte discounts narrow (MHP now at 81%, was below 70% at bottom of market earlier this year) and sulphate returns to small premiums.
No surprise that talk about big boss wanting to add to his nickel short !
$US 2.8 billion handed out by US government - Talon Metals the big winner - picking up over $US100 million. Announced plans to process ore in North Dakota shipping by rail (2km away) to avoid tailings/processing in Minnesota. Talon also put out a new resource update - high grade indicated resource of 1.05 million tonnes grading 4.53% nickel plus by-products (5.76% NiEq) (in the indicated category) within 8.6 million tonnes at 1.73% nickel + by-products
Quebec Nickel Ducros project - hit some good mineralized intervals at its Fortin Sill project - combined 20 metres of Ni/Cu/PGMs (narrow intervals with combined grades higher than Crawford or Dumont) . Greenfield discovery - interesting to see if can get the grade or thickness to make
Vale announced USD$945 million Copper Cliff mine reopening - will produce 10ktpa nickel + 13ktpa copper + PGMs (look at capex intensity !!)
Other results from Gungnir, Estrella, SPC Nickel, Flying nickel which haven’t had a chance to look at yet in detail
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