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Turning Ploughshares into Swords (Why War is Good for the Metals Business)
At a meeting of some of the writers and sponsors of this site towards the end of last year, there was a debate about the value or...
Anthony Lipmann
Mar 30, 2016
March of the Robots
The automation of the financial markets continues apace. Robo-advice is the coming thing in money management, apparently. I may have come...
geoffreysambrook
Mar 23, 2016
A Sustainable Rally?
The beginning of 2016 was horrendous across financial markets. Pretty much everything (excluding precious metals) took an almighty hit,...
geoffreysambrook
Mar 16, 2016
2016 – Back to a Different Future
It used to be relatively straightforward to predict aluminium prices. You could look at demand in the west, then estimate supply and come...
Chris Evans
Mar 9, 2016
How Rhodium lost its Mojo (and how, like Austin Powers, it might get it back…)
It is not immediately obvious how to establish a link between Austin Powers and Rhodium – but I’ll try. It centres, essentially, on...
Anthony Lipmann
Mar 2, 2016
In the Long Run, we are all Dead
On the heels of Anglo’s announcements of intended asset sales come BHP Billiton’s second half 2015 numbers. They show a loss for the...
geoffreysambrook
Feb 24, 2016
Hard Landings
‘Hard landings’ are uncomfortable. In the days when I flew small aeroplanes myself, I made enough of them, but the one that really sticks...
geoffreysambrook
Feb 17, 2016
Set 'em up, Joe
When I was a young clerk and junior dealer on the LME, I would sometimes hear the senior men say to one another as they left the morning...
John Wolff
Feb 10, 2016
An Orwellian Economic Nightmare
Most of us greeted the New Year with a degree of optimism, I think – maybe rightly, maybe wrongly. But today Richard Horswill draws us a...
Richard Horswill
Feb 3, 2016
A China Diary
Jinzhou I have been in China twenty-four hours and no one has mentioned the crisis. Perhaps it is just too cold to talk, as the...
Anthony Lipmann
Jan 27, 2016
Benevolent No More
The London Metal Exchange Benevolent Fund is being wound up, after over a hundred years. I suppose I’m probably fairly typical in that...
geoffreysambrook
Jan 20, 2016
Regulation – or Compliance – at Fault? (And David Bowie)
Financial market regulators come in for quite a lot of criticism, very often well deserved, but on occasion they are not actually the...
geoffreysambrook
Jan 13, 2016
China Disappointment
“This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.” Those two lines (from ‘The Hollow Men’) are probably the most quoted...
geoffreysambrook
Jan 6, 2016
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