Tin prices, along with nickel, weakened last week on the non-ferrous metals market due in part to reduced demand from alloy industries.
According to a report from the Business Standard, owners of metal stocks sold en masse from this lower demand, affecting both tin and nickel with copper prices also softening from a lack of demand.
To begin December, our own Stuart Burns wrote of tin’s continued bull run even with an abundant supply.
Burns wrote:
(Tin) is also relatively well distributed: the five largest producing countries are China 35%, Russia 12%, Australia 8%, Indonesia 7% and Brazil 6%, according to Platts. These mines are not in unstable or war-torn regimes. Some mines in places such as Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are less savory, sure, but as a percentage of the whole they are not mission critical to global ore supply.
Risk with Tin
There is some inherent risk with tin since both supply and demand are not presently driving prices.
Burns concluded:
That doesn’t mean to say the price hasn’t got further to go. There is no shortage of liquidity in the Chinese investment market and speculators this year have pushed not just tin but copper and other metals to annual highs. Tin’s fundamentals aren’t bad by any means but the FT reports that nearly 30% of Chinese smelter capacity sits idle today, a warning sign that high prices may not be matched by downstream demand.