It’s Going Crazy! Bloomburg reports:
“The market on the London Metal Exchange is in the grip of a massive squeeze in which holders of substantial short positions are being forced to cover at a time of low liquidity. To give a sense of nickel’s dizzying surge, it has risen around $11,000 a ton over the last five years. This week alone, it’s jumped by as much as $72,000.
'It’s going crazy -- it’s not reflecting any industry fundamentals,' said Jiang Hang, head of trading at Yonggang Resources Co. The 'LME trading system is out of control and requires intervention,' or the contagion may spill over to other metals, he said.
Late Monday, the LME decided to allow traders to defer delivery obligations on all its main contracts -- including nickel -- in an unusual shift for a 145-year-old institution that touts itself as the “market of last resort” for metals. The LME also gave a unit of China Construction Bank Corp. extra time to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in margin calls that were due Monday, according to people familiar with the matter.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2022/mar/08/nickel-soars-record-commodity-prices-oil-gas-russia-ukraine-ftse-dax-dow-business-live?filterKeyEvents=false&page=with:block-6226fb348f0806dde1f8a4c5#block-6226fb348f0806dde1f8a4c5