Review of Lead Market amid CNY Holiday and Post-Holiday Prospect

SHANGHAI, Jan 28 (SMM) - Review: During the Chinese New Year holiday, LME lead prices rebounded after falling. At the beginning of this week, LME lead dropped to $2,048.5/mt and then rebounded to $2,237/mt. As of this Friday, LME lead closed at $2,179.5/mt. The LME lead inventory changed little during the CNY holiday and remained at 20,250 mt, a 15-year low.

Post-holiday trend: After the Chinese New Year holiday, there will be more important data released by the United States, such as the number of ADP employment in January, the unemployment rate in January and the seasonally adjusted non-farm payrolls in January. In addition, the US Federal Reserve will announce its interest rate decision in early February and the market expected that the Fed will raise the interest rate by 25 basis points.

In terms of fundamentals, according to the holiday arrangements, most primary lead smelting enterprises produced normally during the holiday and large-sized secondary lead enterprises represented in Anhui also produced in shift. But most downstream enterprises took holidays for 5-15 days while only some storage battery companies continued to produce during the CNY holiday. After the holiday, downstream enterprises started work on January 26 at the earliest, and most of the others plan to resume production on January 28-29. The rest of the enterprises will gradually resume on February 5.

In addition, according to the holiday arrangements of upstream and downstream enterprises, the lead ingot social inventory may increase 30,000-50,000 mt due to the longer vacation taken by downstream lead-acid battery enterprises, which may put pressure on the lead prices. The market should pay attention to the production resumption and the restocking demand of downstream enterprises after the CNY holiday