As we signed off during Monday's premarket, LME dealers were re-learning old tricks, picking up and trading via the telephone with LME Select closed due after a weekend upgrade. The session would have been quiet regardless, one observer asserted, with zinc and lead seeing most of the limited action and the rest lingering. Aluminium had seen some early buying out of Asia, nudging an early of 2810, though persistent forward (producer) selling interest capped the rise, while underlying support came from short-covering CTAs. We left off with 3-months trading c. 2800 and after a pullback in the afternoon towards 2780 values recovered as the dollar slipped.
Nearby tightness eased in advance of an expected roll of a very large index-fund long position and Dec-Jan halved to 5.00b, with Dec20-27 at 4.00b (6.00b) and Dec27-Jan17 at 1.00b (4.00b). Talk of wider forward rates on hefty outright selling interest again failed to be substantiated in the figures, with gains in 2008 and 2009 only incremental, while 2007 eased by some $2.00/mth and 2010 by $4.00/mth in places.
The newly upgraded Select reopened and closed again just after London resumed trading on Tuesday morning, which appeared to dampen trade generally. The market's many dinosaurs that had reluctantly embraced 'new' electronic trading technology now seemed unable to work the phones, while the volume-wielding click-and-hit merchants seemed reluctant to return to opaque market-making practices. In the fog, aluminium had traded somewhere between 2790 and 2818, locals estimated, while the LME informed members that it would roll back and restart the previous incarnation of Select. Immediate resistance still pegged c. 2830/40, according to Cliff Green
豫公网安备41010502003434号