LME suspends New Orleans warrants, limits zinc backwardation

摘要

Zinc prices on the London Metal Exchange spiked briefly to eight-year highs last week after the LME's announcement that it had decided to temporarily suspend as good delivery against LME contracts all LME warrants for zinc, copper and primary aluminum stored in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, which hit the city Aug 29/30. But the market failed to sustain its knee-jerk push higher-which saw three-months prices peak at 1,454 dollars/mt on Sep 6-slipping back well below 1,400 dollars/mt by the end of the week. At the time of the exchange's announcement, LME-registered warehouses in New Orleans held 248,575mt of zinc (from total LME stocks of 558,225mt), 1,200mt of aluminum (from a total of 509,225mt) and 900mt of copper (from a total of 69,450mt) on warrant.