Check this out!! Yesterday i speculated that 1-2 funds could buy the entire LME stockpile in a couple of days. Afterall it is not huge and diminishing almost daily. I was searching re stuff on tin and found this. "Currently, one market participant holds between 50 and 80 per cent of tin held under warrant at LME warehouses, according to the LME." I believ almost anything is possible now with tin price. Buying frenzy/panic quite conceivable. BUY MLX....it's not too late. MM.
From UK Financial Times. Tin price jump pushes base metals higher. By Jack Farchy
Published: August 26 2010 19:13 | Last updated: August 26 2010 22:42
The price of tin jumped more than 6 per cent on Thursday, leading a rally among base metals that were buoyed by tight physical supplies and optimism on Chinese growth.
The raw material used in soldering and food packaging jumped to within a whisker of a two-year high on Thursday, up 6.4 per cent to $21,500 a tonne on the London Metal Exchange.
Tin is among the strongest performers in commodity markets in 2010, rising 27.4 per cent for the year to date. That compares with a 12.9 per cent gain for gold, and losses of 1.4 per cent and 7.5 per cent for copper and oil, respectively. Some analysts believe tin could be the first of the base metals to hit a new price record, surpassing the peak above $25,000 a tonne that it hit in 2008.
That is because supply is stagnating at the same time as demand ? especially from the electronics industry in Asia ? is rebounding.
The tin market, the smallest market at the LME, is prone to wild swings due to its relative lack of liquidity as speculators and banks take positions.
Currently, one market participant holds between 50 and 80 per cent of tin held under warrant at LME warehouses, according to the LME.
That comes after inventories of the metal have fallen 50 per cent since January.
But analysts and traders believe the move in prices is being driven by fundamental factors.
?Production continues to be constrained and there is no quick fix to the inherent problem of a lack of investment in new mine capacity,? said Leon Westgate, commodities analyst at Standard Bank.
Indonesia, the world?s largest exporter of tin, that has been hit by heavy rains and production for the first seven months of the year, is down 12 per cent on the same period in 2009.
On the demand side, Chinese tin consumption has risen sharply, in common with other base metals.
Nonetheless, David Wilson, metals analyst at Soci?t? G?n?rale, said Indonesian production appeared to be recovering.
?Although we believe that the market will remain in deficit for the year as a whole, it is our expectation that the significant tightness seen in the market during the first half will ease during the second half, suggesting that the dramatic upward momentum in prices seen in recent months will be difficult to maintain,? he said.
Optimism that China will return to the market as a large buyer of metals boosted the whole base metals complex yesterday.
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