SMM Evening Comments (Feb 5)

SHANGHAI, Feb 5 (SMM) – Nonferrous metals futures saw mixed trading today with rising SHFE tin and zinc. Nickel dropped close to 2% while lead was down 0.79%. Aluminium and copper also edged down.

Ferrous futures prices, however, rose across the board with coke almost 5% higher. Coking coal was up over 4% and iron ore was up 2.5%. Both rebar and hot-rolled coil registered small gains.

Copper: While SHFE copper may look to move upwards during the night trading session, we see pressure at the 10-day moving average.

Aluminium: More positions were added further down the curve as fundamentals remained weak for the lightweight metal. We see pressure at the five-day moving average and we expect the SHFE contract to stay rangebound in the near term.

Nickel: An outflow of 346 million yuan led the SHFE nickel contract to drop 2% today. We see some support at the 20-day moving average.

Tin: We expect SHFE tin to stay firm as investors added their long positions. Pressure is seen at 152,000 yuan/mt.

Zinc: Growing inventories in the face of weaker downstream consumption would keep SHFE zinc from moving up continuously. We expect is to trade rangebound between the five- and 10-day moving averages tonight.

Lead: Support is seen at the 20-day moving average as SHFE lead looks to move above 19,600 yuan/mt tonight with the lead of its LME counterpart.

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