Shanghai base metals were mostly higher on Wednesday morning as investors waited for the release of China's latest benchmark lending rate. Meanwhile, their counterparts on the LME also rose for the most part.

Silicon prices of various grades started to decline after a short period of stability in December 2020. The pressure on the supply side began to appear after the demand fell with high stocks of downstream raw material.

Nonferrous metals on both SHFE and LME declined across the board on Tuesday morning after shares on Wall Street pulled back overnight from all-time highs.

Prices of Chinese cobalt products may slow their downside trend in the short term as uncertainties around raw materials imports remain even as top supplier South Africa has eased coronavirus lockdown measures to level 4 which allowed freight transport to resume. 

Copper scrap supply in China is estimated to have shrunk nearly 200,000 mt in the first three months of 2020, as escalated virus-control measures disrupted global trade flows and as Chinese suppliers held back on sales following a slump in copper prices. A total of 225,083 mt of copper scrap was imported to China in January-to-March, down close to 140,000 mt, or more than 38% from the same period last year, according to data from China customs. SMM estimates that those copper scrap imports, with average Cu content of 78.49%, contained 176,676 mt of copper, down more than 37% from the quarter ended March 2019.

Prices of ternary materials and precursors in China will see further downside risk before May as inventories continued to pile up, driven by slowed or delayed purchases by downstream producers of power batteries amid falling orders. 

SMM surveyed 41 major aluminium processors in 12 provinces and found that their average operating rate dipped 0.6 percentage point on a weekly basis to 74.4% last week.

The global widespread of COVID-19 has forced many countries to enforce stringent containment measures which result in a heavy impact on global economic activity. Over the past few months, we saw serious disruption of manpower, transportation and production in China. We are now seeing these scenarios happening around the world.

The global widespread of COVID-19 has forced many countries to enforce stringent containment measures which result in a heavy impact on global economic activity. Over the past two months, we saw serious disruption of manpower, transportation and production in China. We are now seeing these scenarios happening around the world. 

SHFE nonferrous metals rose across the board on Friday, as market sentiment was rallied after China’s Ministry of Finance pledged to make an early allocation of the special-purpose bond quotas for transportation infrastructure construction.