LME open tonnage gains

摘要

One interesting development this month has been stock movements on certain days onto the LME, after several months of steady daily drawdowns. Following the LME's announcement on 1st July last year of a proposal to limit queues to 100 days (later revised to 50 days in the final amendment to the rules), material began to exit the warehouses' LME registers as warehousing companies were no longer offering the competitive incentives that would attract tonnages away from consumers or traders, at the same time as Chinese import premiums hit very high levels. As a result of these drawdowns, total LME stocks ended the year amounting to just under 366,000t, from a high point of around 678,000t on 21st June.