Thursday, July 7, 2022

Breaking the market

Nickel's 'Big Shot' is moving on, but the market is still reeling.
A worker takes a sample of molten nickel at the Vale Copper Cliff Nickel Smelter in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. Photographer: Cole Burston/Bloomberg

By 2:08 p.m. Shanghai time on March 8, Xiang Guangda's giant bet on a fall in nickel prices was threatening not only to bankrupt his company, but to trigger a Lehman Brothers-like shock through the entire metals industry — and possibly topple the London Metal Exchange itself.

Four months on, the nickel price is falling, as Xiang had predicted. Banks have been repaid. Xiang has closed out nearly all his short position. But the LME is dealing with a raft of investigations and lawsuits, and the nickel market is still reeling.

Read The Big Take.

From today's story

"Nice to see that @jpmorgan and The Big Shot got out of this whole thing with only scratches."
Cliff Asness
Founder of AQR Capital Management on Twitter

ICYMI

Read more from The Big Take.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Trump trades — Bitcoin is boss, bonds at a loss

As Trump trades go, nothing beats Bitcoin (now above $70,000 again). US consumers are feeling better (but, bad news for Harris, poli...