Yesterday we talked about a study on the rising costs of freight and its effect on globalization. The study, in our opinion, contained some factual inaccuracies which could lead the reader to a false conclusion. One factual inaccuracy relates to the cost of shipping a 40′ container from Shanghai to the US eastern seaboard (the […]

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The story in Russia rumbles on. After last week’s news of TNK-BP and the Kremlin led onslaught at Mechel, Russia’s largest steel and coal company, Vladimir Putin has turned his attention on coal companies Evraz Holding and Raspadsky Coal. As this wave of interference rolls on Russian share prices have been sliding as investors take […]

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Nothing gets my goat more than reading something that is not only a little bit misleading but seemingly way off the mark. And now for the second time I have read an article or blog posting referring to a study or analysis put out by CIBC World Markets Inc. I don’t know this firm or […]

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Late last week, platinum prices hit their lowest mark since January, trading at $1,622 an ounce. This comes as a surprise after the first half of the year, when platinum gained 25.6 percent, mirroring similar gains in palladium, which increased 82.3 percent, and rhodium, which increased 42 percent. After those six months, however, remarkable lows […]

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Stainless steel prices will be flat this year but rise in early 2009 said MEPS this week in a brief report, blaming the current weakness on soft seasonal demand in Europe and a weak US housing market. We wouldn’t argue with the soft seasonal demand but we feel it goes further than that. Though nickel prices […]

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This is Part Two of a Two-Part series. You may find the first part here  
In a further twist to the tale now Rusal, the aluminum giant owned by Oleg Deripaska is under investigation for tax avoidance in a move that could net the Russian treasury $2bn in taxes. Rusal (along with many other Russian enterprises) operates […]

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This is Part One of a Two Part Series… 
It would seem old habits die hard in Russia. As BP are forced to withdraw their CEO (before he is arrested on cooked up charges of working with an invalid work permit) – a situation engineered by BP’s Russian partners in BP-TNK their joint venture Russian oil […]

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My learned colleague Stuart mentioned to me yesterday that he saw an article in a trial subscription of Steel Business Briefing, that steel producers in the US “were exporting finished products overseas at under domestic prices.” Now if that wasn’t a hoot given all the squawking by US steel companies over foreign material entering the […]

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MetalMiner has always held a strong free market philosophy. Our belief is in most cases the benefits of lower cost material to consumers outweighs the damage to domestic producers that global trade can bring. In our experience, calls for anti- dumping fines, import tariffs or quotas are nearly always brought by large industrial producers.  The losers […]

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For those that follow the new LME Billet contract, or those that want to once we launch our new premium service, MetalMiner IndX (SM) which daily tracks this and many other metals, there has been a telling development in the prices over the last week few weeks or so. Amid continuous reports of rising steel costs, prices for […]

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