1、 Trend analysis

According to the nickel price monitoring of the Business Agency, the nickel price fell first and then rose this week. As of January 13, the spot nickel quotation was 219616 yuan/ton, down 1.56% from the beginning of the week and up 31.85% year on year.

Weekly rise and fall chart of nickel

According to the weekly rise and fall chart of the Business News Agency, the nickel price rose by 7 and fell by 5 in the past 12 weeks, and fell back after the recent strength of the nickel price.

Nickel industry chain

On the macro level, CPI rose 6.5% year-on-year in December 2022, which was in line with market expectations, and the increase was the smallest since October 2021; The month-on-month decline was 0.1%, the first month-on-month decline in two and a half years. In December 2022, the core CPI rose 5.7% year-on-year, the lowest level since December 2021. Federal Reserve Huck said it was time to adjust the rate increase to 25 basis points in the future.

In terms of supply and demand: short-term nickel plate resources at the supply side are still tight. Under the demand of alloy enterprises for pre-holiday stock, Jinchuan nickel premium is relatively strong, and the current market activity is generally low. But at present, the pure nickel import window is open. Since the opening of the pure nickel import window in early November, many import traders have difficulties in importing, and the import resources are mainly based on consumption of inventory. After the opening of the import window, the shortage of pure nickel is expected to improve in the short term. The production reduction of consumer-end steel mills is expected to increase in January, and the market has a strong atmosphere of waiting for holidays and weak demand.

To sum up, macroeconomic optimism drives metals. LME will take measures to restore confidence in the metal market. However, nickel fundamentals are poor. The nickel price is expected to fluctuate.