Impact of Liquidity Crunch on Copper to Weaken

The dollar index and the euro both slipped on Thursday in choppy trading as investors waited on a speech by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Friday for further clues about the ongoing pace of the U.S. central bank’s rate hikes.

The dollar eased against most major currencies on Thursday as support from the Federal Reserve’s hawkish messaging subsided a day before hotly anticipated U.S. jobs data, even as pessimism about a protracted recession ebbed.

The dollar retraced from a 20-year high and the euro broke back above parity, following a brief dip below, after data on Wednesday showed U.S. consumer price inflation surged to a more than 40-year high in June.

The U.S. dollar was up 0.35% at 136.165 yen, gaining support from a strong rebound in the 10-year Treasury yield, which jumped to 2.9780% in Tokyo on Tuesday from the lowest since May at 2.7910% on Friday.

G7 agreed to set price cap on Russian energy imports

Huayou Cobalt issued an announcement on investment that the company plans to jointly build Huashan Nickel-Cobalt with an annual output of 120,000 mt of Ni content and nickel-cobalt hydroxide hydrometallurgy project with Glaucous through its wholly-owned subsidiary Huatuo International Development Pte. Ltd.

LME lead opened at $2,056/mt and rose by 2.34% to $2,098/mt overnight, after hitting the lowest point of $2,042/mt and the highest point of $2,099.5/mt. During the Asian trading hours, affected by the SHFE lead, LME lead fluctuated between $2,050-2070/mt while in the European trading hours,  LME lead hit one-month low amid the increase of US dollar and then rose up due to the increase of SHFE lead. The most traded SHFE 2207 lead contract opened at 14,960 yuan/mt overnight and rose up to 15,195 yuan/mt as the lead ingot warrant inventories declined by 8,000 mt, and finally closed at 15,180 yuan/mt, up 1.71%. The open interest decreased by 5,454 lots from the previous trading day to 44,274 lots.

Technology analyst company CCS Insight said in its latest global market forecast report that 5G mobile technology users will exceed 1 billion in 2022.

Manganese ore import prices differed significantly in May. The monthly average price of Australia lump remained at 62 yuan/mtu, flat MoM.

For the highly concerned crude steel production cuts in Jiangsu, a reporter learned from industry sources, that relative noticed did have been released in Jiangsu.