2015 has been a pretty miserable year for investors. No asset class really stood out as providing more than a mediocre return, and in...

When people reach a certain age in every generation, we are liable to hear the words – ‘things were much better in my day’, and we know...

A conversation with a fund manager started me thinking the other day. Talking about the distressed nature of the commodity markets at the...

A new concept seems to be creeping into the trading vocabulary – ‘malicious short-selling’ first reared its head as a problem for the...

George  Orwell is a wonderfully quotable author. Think of ‘1984’, ‘Animal Farm’, ‘Big Brother is watching you’, ‘all animals are equal,...

This week, Richard Horswill proposes a radical shift in the world’s monetary system. Is it a stock picker? Is it a bond buyer? No, it’s...

Some things change; others look for a while as if they are doing so, but, standing back, we get to see that actually they are but a part...

Wouldn’t it be convenient if we could find a Joseph (preferably with a coat of many colours rather than an amazing technicolour dreamcoat...

This week, James van Bregt takes a counter-intuitive view of the LME Week phenomenon. The annual stand-and-shout extravaganza that is LME...

Wouldn’t it be great if the VW crisis (which was essentially caused by the pretence of greenness, and therefore a green lie not a white...

There are a couple of LME matters that are perhaps worth a look. First, there’s the slightly thorny issue of the long-term existence of...

I often think of Tolstoy’s story, ‘How much land does a man need?’ (1886)  in relation to the sometimes vast ambition of metal people. ...

October 2015; another LME Dinner Week looms. It’s difficult to imagine that it will be an event bringing unfettered joy and celebration...

It was a great wheeze wasn’t it? Buy up a few LME warehouses. Stuff them with metal and make it difficult for title-owners to deliver...

I think the mining community must be the most optimistic bunch of people on earth. After all, they look at the dirt in a hole in the...

A while ago, I wrote a piece on this website talking about the legacy of  Metallgesellschaft Ltd and its evolution through various...

Is there an answer to the question of succession for private metal trading companies? Or is corporate euthanasia the only alternative? In...

The difficulties we see currently in China are not so much absolute problems as issues of unfulfilled expectations. After all, the stock...

Over the last thirty-odd years, Robert Parker has become the most influential man involved in the business of selling wine. His overall...

After Admiral Byng was executed in 1757 for failing to hold Menorca, Voltaire wrote “Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en...