London aluminium prices slipped on Thursday from near one-month highs hit the session before on expectations that a period of tight supply will soon ease.
FUNDAMENTALS
* London Metal Exchange aluminium slipped by 0.7 percent to $1,896 a tonne by 0117 GMT, trimming a 1.4 percent gain in the previous session that saw prices tip the highest in a month at $1,917.
* Supporting prices, cancelled warrants, or metal earmarked for removal from LME warehouses, have surged in the past 10 days to nearly 400,000 tonnes from 235,000 tonnes in the middle of January, accounting for around one third of the LME’s 1.3 million tonnes of stock. MALSTX-TOTAl
* The Trump administration is expected to lift sanctions on companies linked to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, including Rusal, as soon as Friday. That could mean that aluminium that had previously been caught by sanctions is available to market.
* DOLLAR: Other metals were a touch firmer, finding support from a weaker dollar.
* SHFE: On the Shanghai Futures Exchange, aluminium traded up 0.6 percent at at 13,565 yuan ($1,998) having hit the weakest in more than two years at 13,230 mid-month.
* SHFE stocks: Stocks of most metals have fallen in China over the past few months. A trader said that banks are reluctant to lend to zinc manufacturers ahead of Chinese New Year, which he expects to lengthen a shortage of refined metal.
* TRADE CONCERNS: U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the United States was doing well in trade talks with China.
* CHINA GROWTH: China’s economy can maintain sustainable rates of growth despite global uncertainties, Vice President Wang Qishan said on Wednesday, days after the world’s second-largest economy posted its weakest expansion in nearly three decades.
* DOLLAR: The dollar eased against its peers on Thursday, as concerns over global growth, a U.S. government shutdown and U.S.-Sino trade talks kept a tight lid on the greenback.
