Rally In Base Metals Can Sustain Through End Of This Year, SocGen Says

The major factor is signs of stability in China. We have economic data showing that growth is continuing to surprise on the upside. That’s clearly significant because China is the largest consumer of all metals in the global economy. Also, there are signs the government in China is consolidating capacity. It started with the coal and the steel industries. Now it’s been expanded to include aluminium, lead and zinc and other industries in a bid to rationalise competitive production, but more importantly, to try and curb some of the environmental problems the country has faced. Particularly with smog and pollution over the winter months which the government is tackling very hard. And of course, these commodities are priced in dollars and the dollar has been weak and of course that has helped underpin the prices. And very recently, with a slew of investors found jumping on to the bandwagon, base metals saw some momentum buying and prices moved higher. We see some good returns coming from the sector.

Yes, demand has remained quite strong, it isn’t as good as it would have been prior to the financial crisis, prior to 2007. But it’s getting better. I would say this year is probably the first year of synchronised upswing, so stability in China, growth coming into the U.S., Japan has recorded a very strong quarterly GDP growth numbers very recently. The euro zone as well has shown some good economic data. So it is the first year of a synchronised upswing in the global growth. And of course base metal demand is highly leveraged to global growth. So that does reflect confidence about the prospects to the global economy, highlighted by IMF and World Bank coming out with favorable comments about the global economy, although warning about the excessive debt levels in China. Overall, the upswing should continue certainly for the foreseeable future.

I think it is sustainable through to the end of this year. I think Chinese growth remains strong this year. We have the National People’s Congress in October-November where the Chinese cabinet is reshuffled. I think the government will want a stable backdrop to that change in government both before and after to provide stability and send a strong message to the rest of the world, especially the U.S. which is looking at China in terms of trade practices and keeping its currency undervalued and so on. So certainly for the remainder of this year I think global growth remains strong, then becomes murkier as we go into 2018. Largely because we think China will slow. We think credit growth in China will begin to trend lower. However, a slowed China may well be offset by better growth in the rest of the world. I don’t think it is too negative going forward. The next 5-6 months should show some stability in global growth and and I think that will help to underpin further increases in metal prices. Next year though, it is not clear whether growth can continue to build on the momentum that we had this year, primarily because we the Chinese government will not want to boost credit as they have done both last year and this year because of the clear dangers of a over-indebted economy.