LONDON (Reuters) – “This is a tangible, clear story which is really going to effect price, spreads and premiums”. The story in question, according to Eoin Dinsmore, head of primary aluminium and products research at CRU, is a building supply deficit in the aluminium market.
Dinsmore’s presentation at the research house’s aluminium conference in London last week was titled: “Don’t doubt the deficit”. Yet hardly anyone outside of the aluminium market believes in this unfolding bull narrative.
Financial players are “simply not interested” in aluminium, according to Colin Hamilton, managing director of commodities research at BMO Capital Markets.
“Over the past year client questions on aluminium have been few and far between,” Hamilton wrote in BMO’s round-up of the conference, adding that the lack of investors at the meeting was itself a sign of the broader lack of interest. (“CRU Aluminium Conference Feedback,” April 28, 2019)
The indifference is also clear to see in the London aluminium market where prices have done little more than trudge sideways since the start of the year. At $1,830 per tonne, aluminium is the second-weakest performer among the base metals after perennially out-of-favour lead.
For the rest of this article: https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-metals-aluminium-ahome/column-aluminiums-bull-narrative-is-lost-in-the-shadows-idUKKCN1S51HE