Happy Canada Day (belated) to all, and for those of us whose forebears had the courage to fight tyranny, when did we lose it?
Anyhow, a few thoughts:
1) LME nickel stocks below 20 kt. Ok, gimme some garbage about warrants and the Russkis starting to ship out of Dudinka. Remember boys, the European steel mills are all shut in August; and they don't take Ni in June and July, so it looks like supplies are really tight
2) Funky stuff in Oz. Preston credit rating changed to D by Standard & Poors. Missed another semiannual interest payment (owe the bank $1000, you have a problem; owe the bank $100 mil, you have a partner). Somebody fill me in on the last time a company with a credit rating of D survived. Did Public Service of Indiana get that low with their nuclear problems?
Also, both Anglo and Glencore have increased their shareholdings in Anaconda. Anglo in response to Glencore [could be Twiggy selling???]
Now, there are thoughts extant that Preston and perhaps Cawse (note Centaur stock trading at 11c and that with an operating gold mine) may have to close doors, eg, the economics of production will never be right. [confer one of my posts from last week]. The question then becomes, if Anglo wants to close MM for 6-9 months to basically re-engineer the thing from start, and Glencore is buying up stock to support Twiggy and prevent Anglo from shutting the damn thing down and fixing it, and LME stores are at the lowest level in 10 years, and everybody has to rearm because Clinton has been too busy shagging broads (Bill, read quickly, thought police sure to delete now) and selling US nuclear secrets to Chinese (gee, now that they have MIRV would they throw Ottawa onto the target list?) to pay attention to USN, what happens to Ni price???
Of course, for us to get rich before the Chinese vaporize us, CMR still has to get into production, in our lifetimes. Consult your METLIFE (?SunLife) tables to calculate your chances. One notes that the Chinese don't talk too much about their MIRV ICBM nuclear weapons, they simply PRODUCE them.
To end on a positive, trading looks more liquid. Assuming commissioning is starting up and going well at Refinery, we should see upside bias. |
