Nickel fell more than 3 percent on Thursday, slipping further from the more than two-year high it hit last week on speculation that an expected electric vehicle boom would drive up demand. Nickel prices surged almost 10 percent during the annual London Metal Exchange Week industry gathering on expectations that nickel demand for use in lithium ion batteries would increase as electric car buying ramped up.
Since then, the metal has come under pressure from profit taking after it jumped above $13,000 a tonne, ABN Amro analyst Casper Burgering said, with broader issues such as recent strength in the dollar feeding into the correction. "I still think the fundamentals for nickel are sound, though stocks are relatively high," he said.
London Metal Exchange nickel closed down 3.1 percent at $12,300 a tonne, its biggest one-day slide since September 22. Nickel inventories held in LME warehouses rose 2,352 tonnes from Tuesday's near seven-week low, exchange data showed on Wednesday. While expecting annual nickel demand from the electric vehicle sector to grow to 300,000 tonnes by 2025, Morgan Stanley said the market had been ignoring downside risks from policy developments in Indonesia, which recently lifted curbs on ore exports, and the Philippines, where the end of a ban on open-pit mining has been mooted.
LME copper ended the day down 0.7 percent at $6,808 a tonne, erasing a small gain from the previous session. It earlier fell to its lowest in nearly a month at $6,761.50. LME copper may fall to $6,756 an tonne, its wave pattern and a Fibo projection analysis suggest, Reuters technical analyst Wang Tao said.
China's producer prices were surprisingly strong in October, while consumer inflation picked up pace, suggesting the world's second-largest economy remains robust despite expected curbs on factory output as the government pursues a war on smog. Resurgent industrial metals prices, powered by enthusiasm for the electric vehicle revolution and a Chinese pollution crackdown are starting to look overblown, raising the risk of a correction next year, a Reuters poll showed.
LME zinc finished down 0.5 percent at $3,176 a tonne, while lead closed up 0.3 percent at $2,514 a tonne. LME zinc stock fell another 3,275 tonnes, exchange data showed on Thursday, taking them to their lowest in nearly two months. Aluminium ended 0.8 percent lower at $2,093 a tonne, while tin finished down 0.3 percent at $19,425 a tonne.
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