The price of aluminum at the close of trading last week was observed to strengthen. Remarkably, this strengthening occurred in the midst of weakening prices for other industrial metals such as copper, nickel and tin.
Based on Bloomberg data on Thursday (18/4), the price of three-month contract aluminum on the London Metal Exchange (LME), rose 0.91% to US$ 1,867 per metric ton. Meanwhile, during the previous week, the price of aluminum rose 0.37% from US$ 1,860 per metric ton.
Just so you know Shanghai aluminum futures held steady after five days of gains as aluminum stocks declined, signaling a seasonal pick-up in demand. SMM Information & Technology Co. reported that the stock of aluminum ingots fell to 1.587 million tons this month.
The cost of alumina, which is used to produce aluminum in China, rose 0.7% to 2,715 yuan per tonne today. President Director of PT Garuda Berjangka Ibrahim assessed that the increase in commodity prices was undeniable because the new home sales index in the United States (US) rose. Naturally, because aluminum is one of the important elements of the property industry.
The US government reported in the March period data on new US home sales sold 667,000 homes. This figure is up 1.5% from the January 2019 achievement of 657,000 houses. Ibrahim said, the problem of low supply and high demand in the end benefited aluminum. “It is necessary to pay attention to the release of data for the next period, if it weakens, then aluminum could be corrected,” said Ibrahim to Kontan.co.id, Tuesday (23/4).
China’s economy as an aluminum producer and consumer is slowly turning around after forecasting a slowdown last month. Last week, the release of China’s economic data, namely the gross domestic product (GDP) in the first quarter of 2019 grew 6.4%. This figure is higher than the previous expectation at the level of 6.3%.
Ibrahim assessed that the price of the favorite energy commodity, namely oil, which has an upward trend, will always benefit aluminum. Moreover, today the global oil price of WTI rose 0.54% at the level of US$ 65.91 per barrel.
This happened after the appeal of the President of the United States (US), Donald Trump, who said that all countries must cut off oil imports from Iran. Trump stressed that at least importing countries do so early next month.
For tomorrow’s trading, Ibrahim predicts that the aluminum price will continue to strengthen at the level of US$ 1,848-US$ 1,887 per metric ton. More broadly, the price prediction for the week is in the range of US$ 1,825-US$ 1,890 per metric ton.