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Strategies & Market Trends : Commodities - The Coming Bull Market -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: H James Morris who wrote (725)	8/24/2001 4:39:38 PM
From: craig crawford	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1643

WILL RUSSIA PLAY ITS PALLADIUM CARD? fm.co.za By John Helmer, Moscow What exactly counts as the market for platinum group metals (PGMs) is difficult to tell. The recent price falls of platinum and palladium were fixed in Tokyo, London, and New York on tiny trades of a few thousand or, on some days, a few hundred ounces. What kind of commodity market sets international prices on the sale of less material than can fit into one tourist-class suitcase? A speculators' market, that's what. Outside the network of telephone links and computers that make the big-city spot-market fixes, Chinese importers recently bought 200 000 oz of platinum - about 20% of Chinese annual consumption - for jewellery ................................................................................................................................. So, if the consumers of platinum and palladium believe the metals' prices have hit bottom, what do they know that the spot-market players don't? The fact is that the users and the speculators believe the same thing - that the price will start to rise soon because there is likely to be more demand than supply. Palladium supply figures show why they are betting Russia will supply less of the metal to the market this year than in 2000. The US has imported 89,2 t (2,9m oz) of palladium so far this year - just over half the volume it imported last year. Japan has imported 18,3 t (588 000 oz) to date and will have to raise its purchases almost fourfold in the months ahead to match last year's imports. Analysts expect auto production to be flat compared with last year, or down by no more than 5%. ............................................................................................................................ So, if Rudakov sticks to his word and prevents further deliveries of stockpile palladium to the market, Norilsk Nickel deliveries will be inadequate to fill demand; Russian supplies would be at least 10% lower this year than last. Demand will exceed supply and, if buying is concentrated in the short period to Christmas, pressure on the price will reverse and it will rise again. Quite soon, and quite fast.

To: H James Morris who wrote (725)	10/10/2001 6:21:45 PM
From: craig crawford	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1643

Not Taking a Shine to Platinum Metals Yet thestreet.com By Howard Simons Special to TheStreet.com 10/09/2001 03:17 PM EDT Off in another corner of the matrix are the platinum group metals. These are far scarcer than gold and are of such great economic value that approximately 20% of the goods in the modern economy have one of the platinum group catalysts involved somewhere in their manufacture. The precious metals have been emitting inflationary warnings, and the base industrial metals have been stuck in recessionary gear. What can we learn from the platinum group, which includes platinum, palladium, osmium, iridium, ruthenium and rhodium ............................................................................................................................... From Russia With Shove Just like crude oil is found in such desolate locales as the deserts of Arabia, the jungles of Indonesia, the trackless wastes of north Alaska and in Los Angeles, the platinum group is found in such garden spots as South Africa, western Australia and Canada. The world's incremental supplies have come from mines in northern Siberia. A series of production disruptions in Russia -- our newfound allies in the fight against global terrorism mysteriously get victimized by disruptions when whatever they produce enters a bull market -- led to some Nasdaq-like price jumps in the metals' prices between late 1999 and early 2001. That bubble has burst as all commodity-price bubbles do. Higher prices stimulate new production and lead to demand conservation. The severity of this price collapse reflects, by definition, a supply/demand imbalance. Supply remains strong as exporters strapped for hard currency maintain production even as prices fall. Demand has weakened as a function of the downturn in global manufacturing. Are there any signals from the equities of platinum miners that this cycle is about to break? .............................................................................................................................. The implication here is the same one reached last week from the base metals prices: If an economic recovery, or at least a manufacturing recovery, is imminent, it's news to metals buyers.

To: H James Morris who wrote (725)	1/28/2002 9:03:49 AM
From: craig crawford	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1643

Rising aluminium output to soak up alumina surplus money.iwon.com Friday January 25, 12:19 PM EST By Amanda Cooper LONDON, Jan 25 (Reuters) - A global alumina surplus will wane in 2002 as primary aluminium production and Chinese imports rise, analysts said on Friday. The alumina surplus in 2002 will shrink to 730,000 tonnes from 1.08 million tonnes in 2001, with a deficit of 1.02 million tonnes emerging in 2003, UK-based consultant Brook Hunt said in a December report. Analyst Adam Rowley of Macquarie Bank said, "The market should tighten up because aluminium production will grow substantially in the next two years." Several large alumina projects are set to start up in the next few years, but this fresh output will be absorbed by new aluminium plants and Chinese import demand, analysts said. Recent data showed alumina imports rose over 90 percent year-on-year in the first nine months of 2001. China is the largest consumer of alumina and could hold the key to the balance of the market as it runs down the large stockpile it amassed over 2001, analysts said. "If it wasn't for the Chinese...increasing their offtake of supply last year, the western world (2001) surplus would have been enormous," Brook Hunt analyst Angus MacMillan said. "The Chinese might roll over their stockpile (of alumina) or add to it, and that's a big question in the market this year," Macquarie's Rowley said. "There are a whole host of aluminium smelters planning to raise capacity in the next year or who have achieved capacity increases last year," Rowley said. "We think Chinese aluminium production will rise by some 600,000 tonnes in 2002, and that's another 1.2 million tonnes of alumina that China will need," he said. ALUMINA CAPACITY RISING In Australia Rio Tinto plc (RIO) will start building its Gladstone alumina refinery this year, and plans to make the first shipments from the 1.4-million tonne plant in 2005. In India, Alcan (AL), Hindalco (HALC) and Indal (IALM) have teamed up get the giant Uktal alumina project running, which will expand to 3.0 million tonnes in 2008/09 from around 1.0 million tonnes when it comes on stream in 2005/06. World number three Norsk Hydro (NHY) pulled out of the project in December because of the poor outlook for the alumina market and the lack of progress with Uktal, which has been delayed since December 2000. "We've seen a substantial increase in production in particular over the course of the past few years and have seen this depress the price right through last year," Brook Hunt's MacMillan said. "This pressure was exacerbated by the fact that there have been pretty substantial cutbacks in (aluminium) smelter production," he said, referring to the power-related cutbacks in the U.S. and Brazil in 2000/01 that cut world aluminium output by around seven percent. At the end of 2001 Ormet Primary Aluminium Corp of the U.S. temporarily closed its 600,000-tonne a year Burnside alumina refinery, but this did little to stop the fall in the price of alumina, analysts said. "In the absence of further deliberate cutbacks or unforeseen disruptions, we're still looking for a significant increase in alumina production in 2002 and 2003," MacMillan said.