Indications at 7:55 am CST show nickel trading up by $.55/lb....

Indications at 7:55 am CST show nickel trading up by $.55/lb. (Bloomberg - more) As with the last few days, if we see any major movement in the price of nickel in either direction, we will add an update. (Comment - There are probably a few out there patting themselves on the back for predicting a bubble burst in the nickel market, so we thought we would take a moment to remind our readers that, in our opinion, the bull market is not dead. Nickel may be nearly 30% off its recent peak, but we are still nearly 460% higher than we were back in June of 2003. Here are just a few facts about the leading driver behind the demand which has put such a strain on supply - "China has 450 cities with a population of at least 250,000 - compared to 68 cities in the United States with at least a quarter of a million people." - "China has over 100 cities with a population of at least 1 million people - the United States has 9" - "Half of China’s 1.3 billion people are under age 24. Over 300 million, more than the population of the US, are under the age of 14" - "Every month, China must build enough urban infrastructure to accommodate a city the size of Houston in order to absorb the 300 million rural Chinese who will move to cities in the next 15 years." - "China has more speakers of English as a second language than America has native English speakers." (more facts can be found in "China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World," by Ted Fishman) And since a picture is worth a thousand words, we give you the Pudong District of Shanghai, which in 1990 was no more than farmland and countryside, and housing a few old broken down warehouses. To get to it from Shanghai back then, you had to take a ferryboat. Today 6 bridges and 5 tunnels connect it to the fastest growing district of Shanghai. Here is a photo of those rice paddies today (Pudong, China at night). That building on the right is currently the tallest building in China, the Jin Mao Tower, and here is a day shot from atop it (Pudong, China in the day). (Over 3,000 skyscrapers having more than 24 floors have been built since 1990. Another 3,000 are planned.) The vegetation may have thinned a bit for stainless steel producers and users, but we aren't anywhere near the edge of the woods yet.)

I'm guessing all this new wealth will be looking forward to surrounding themselves with SS appliances....Nickel demand is unlikely to subside for some time yet.