MLS chart, page-341

Meanwhile 2018 is looking good for our key commodities.
Just a couple of  snippets I found.


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GRAPHITE INVESTING



Graphite Outlook 2018: Market Expected to Tighten
What's the graphite outlook for 2018? Market watchers explain what happened last year and what factors to watch next year.
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Melissa Shaw • December 12, 2017
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2017 started off slow for graphite, but heading into the new year analysts and companies are optimistic about the future.

While prices for lithium and cobalt have soared this year on surging demand for electric cars, prices for graphite, another metal used in the batteries that power these vehicles, have reacted less strongly.

However, by October prices were on the rise for the first time since mid-2016, according to Roskill. Fine flake graphite rose by 36 percent, the firm said at the time, hitting an average of $863 tonne, while medium-flake prices increased by 31 percent to reach $953 per tonne.


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Fine- and medium-flake graphite are typically used to produce spherical graphite. Large-flake graphite is used in expandable graphite, and rose by 25 percent in October to average $998 per tonne.

Speaking more recently, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence analyst Andrew Miller said, “for the first time in over five years, we’re now seeing consistent increases in pricing due to supply-side pressures. At the same time, you have the emergence of new demand from value-added applications such as expandable graphite and spherical graphite for lithium-ion batteries.”

The chart below shows the latest graphite prices by mesh:



Chart via Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.
Zinc prices trended upward in 2017, and have now surged more than 21 percent year-to-date. Luckily for fans of the base metal, many analysts remain bullish for 2018.

Supply concerns have hit the refined zinc market in recent months, with prices reaching a decade high in August and continuing to trade above the $3,000-per-tonne level since then. As of Monday (December 11), LME zinc was changing hands at $3,092.

Read on to learn more what experts expect in terms of the zinc outlook next year, from supply and demand to potential price catalysts. All in all, the year looks set to be a good one.

As I said snippets, not full articles, but just a reminder to all about the big picture here!

GLTA

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