Nickel Gain Enables BHP to Anglo to Sell Mines

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Nanthakumar Victor Emmanuel, P.Eng Leave a comment

Analysts are divided on how long the rally will run. Nickel for three-month delivery at the London Metal Exchange rose to $21,000 a ton May 13, the highest since February 2012, and was trading at $19,000 at 9:25 a.m. While Goldman Sachs Group Inc. sees prices dropping in the next 12 months as the Chinese build up processing capacity in Indonesia to skirt around the ban, Macquarie forecasts rising prices for years.

“The Indonesian ore export ban is a game-changer,” both for the nickel markets and for asset disposal, Jeffrey Largey, an analyst at Macquarie in London, said in a phone interview. “We have a very compelling price profile, it ramps pretty aggressively. That’s mainly because we start to see a meaningful structural deficit emerging in the commodity.”