Stuart Burns

Commodity Prices Fall on China and Greece Fears

by Stuart Burns on May 16, 2012

Style:    Category: Commodities, Investing Hedging, Metal Prices

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Investors are a funny lot. The phrase “herd mentality” may have been created to describe the behavior of our four-footed friends, but it applies equally well to the investor fraternity. For months, the prospect of a slowing China and the departure of Greece from the euro have been on the cards, prompting some no doubt [...]

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Post-Jakarta Crash, Russia’s Sukhoi SuperJet 100 Sales Should Dip

by Stuart Burns on May 15, 2012

Style:    Category: Company News, Product Developments

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Embraer and Bombardier were probably not overly worried by the competition posed by the Sukhoi SuperJet 100 short-haul jet  prior to last week’s crash near Jakarta, Indonesia — but the tragedy will certainly hinder competition in the short to medium term from the jet that Russia had hoped would mark their return to civilian aviation. [...]

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Zinc in Oversupply For Now, But What’s to Come?

by Stuart Burns on May 14, 2012

Style:    Category: Inventory Stock Levels, Non-ferrous Metals, Supply & Demand

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Zinc buyers (and/or metal-with-a-significant-zinc-content buyers) may be forgiven for feeling pretty sanguine about the supply market for the zinc content of their components. Rising LME inventory levels and prices of zinc that have moderated from the highs of last July suggest a market that is comfortably in oversupply, and indeed the International Lead and Zinc [...]

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Obsolescence – The Reverse of Moore’s Law

by Stuart Burns on May 11, 2012

Style:    Category: Minor Metals, Product Developments, Sourcing Strategies

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Continued from Part One.  The only problem with these long-lasting tube-bending machines, wearily explained to us by the purchasing team one day, was that the engineers chose components from the book of the obscure, and as a result, when that component required replacement at some stage in the future, it almost certainly would no longer [...]

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Mitigating Obsolescence With Your Sourcing Strategies

by Stuart Burns on May 11, 2012

Style:    Category: Minor Metals, Product Developments, Sourcing Strategies

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Source: e-scribe.com A really intriguing article in the Financial Times this week explores the problem of obsolescence and how it is becoming more acute as the pace of change increases. Quoting a source, the article illustrates the point by saying in 1903, the Wright brothers flew the first plane, and the flight lasted for something [...]

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Higher Physical Metal Premiums Profit No One

by Stuart Burns on May 10, 2012

Style:    Category: Commodities, Inventory Stock Levels, Investing Hedging, Non-ferrous Metals

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Continued from Part One.  In contrast, consumers of tin (arguably a market much more in balance than oversupplied aluminum) are not facing high spot delivery premiums because mills are keeping the market well-supplied with direct deliveries, said to be at premiums for high-grade tin over the LME cash price of $625 to $650 a ton, [...]

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Are Physical Delivery Premiums Being Manipulated?

by Stuart Burns on May 10, 2012

Style:    Category: Commodities, Inventory Stock Levels, Investing Hedging, Non-ferrous Metals

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Metals buyers are an assiduous lot, carefully tracking and recording the price movement of those base metals on which the materials and components their firm depends with admirable diligence. Ask a metals buyer for the current copper price and he will often have the number to within a cent per pound off the top of [...]

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Nickel: Weak and Looking Weaker

by Stuart Burns on May 8, 2012

Style:    Category: Commodities, Non-ferrous Metals, Supply & Demand

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The nickel market, as Reuters points out in a recent article, has been characterized by two supply-side factors, even as demand has risen. On the one hand, Chinese nickel pig iron (NPI) production has kept the country well supplied in refined nickel, in spite of a falling nickel price supposedly putting cost pressures on the [...]

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