Tag: Week In Review

Despite our concern that last weekend's doomed US-Canada trade talks would unsettle sentiment, most markets shrugged off the impasse and instead held up fairly well.

The breakdown in the US-Canada talks underscores one of the least talked about problems with tariffs. Imposing them is relatively easy (provided they are not overturned by the courts). But when it comes to removing them? A number of industries have grown accustomed to the protection tariffs afford. They will fight tooth and nail to keep them in place. Politicians usually buckle under this backlash, and we suspect this is what happened here.

We generally saw less hectic conditions in the various markets this past week as the lack of significant geopolitical or macro headlines kept volatility somewhat at bay.

Outside of crude, most other commodity markets finished higher. In the base metals group, copper, zinc, and aluminum each added between 2% to 3%.

It was a very hectic week in a number of markets, but not so much in the ferrous and nonferrous metals space.

Markets remain transfixed on developments in the Middle East

We have seen aluminum correlate quite well with oil prices since the Iran war started. But there has been a noticeable disconnect between the two over the past few weeks.

Aluminum prices were up by 2% on the week. No surprise here because the complex tends to track crude oil prices closely.

Markets were somewhat adrift this past holiday-shortened week as there was not much meaningful news to go by.

We saw lower moves in base metals. Aluminum prices retreated by about 6.3% last week, shadowing crude lower on rising perceptions of easing metal outflows.