The main Shanghai nickel futures contract rebounded sharply by 17% last week, and stainless steel continued to stabilize. Nickel spot basis remains wide, with nickel import losses narrowing due to higher prices. The apparent profit of stainless steel fell to around 700 yuan per ton. On the macro side, it had little impact on nickel prices last week, and market transactions were mainly based on its own rebound logic. Fundamentally, nickel still maintains a weak demand. The game and see-saw between the upstream and downstream of stainless steel are still going on. The nickel price has rebounded significantly recently, and the fundamentals have hardly changed, mainly because the price fell to around 160,000 yuan, which triggered many demand-side buying. At present, the demand-side positioning for the nickel price is 170,000 yuan per ton, that is, the price is below 170,000 yuan per ton, and downstream processing enterprises are willing to overstock. At present, downstream expectations for nickel prices are more optimistic, and they believe that there is a possibility of returning to more than 190,000 yuan per ton in the future. From a strategic point of view, the logic of trading rebound is still in the short term, but the Fed’s interest rate decision will be held this week, which may have a restraining effect on the entire non-ferrous metal prices.
Post time: Jul-26-2022