SHANGHAI, Jan 30 (SMM) – Nonferrous metals fell for the most part on Tuesday January 30 except for a small rise in SHFE tin. SHFE aluminium led the loss by a 1.5% decline, while copper and lead dropped close to 1%.

The ferrous market saw mixed trading with iron ore and coking coal up slightly. Coke was down over 1%, as rebar slid 0.6% and hot-rolled coil slipped 0.5%.

Copper: We expect copper prices to stay weak tonight as the US president Donald Trump is expected to give positive signals to infrastructure spending in his State of the Union speech which may drive up US dollar.

Aluminium: The main contract of SHFE aluminium touched a one-and-an-half month low today as bearish fundamentals remained. We see support at the 14,500 yuan/mt level but there is room to move downwards with stabilising US dollar. 

Nickel: SHFE nickel saw an outflow of 500 million yuan today as the 1805 contract closed 1.4% lower. Investors are watching out for the US consumer confidence index for January tonight.

Zinc: A total of 31,000 lots of open interest was reduced for the SHFE 1802 and 1803 contracts as funds cut their positions. We expect to see rangebound trading in the night session.

Lead: LME lead drove the SHFE movement in the afternoon session as the latter closed 0.7% lower. We expect SHFE lead to trade around the 10-day moving average while support is seen at the 20-day moving average.

Tin: Even though tin outperformed other base metals today, we see rangebound trading in the near term at the 150,000 yuan/mt level. Support is expected at 148,000 yuan/mt. 

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