Nickel

1st Sep '19 by William K

5 comments 807 reads

Nickel is a vital component for the batteries of electric cars. The price has risen 63% this year from $11,000 a ton to $18,000 a ton. The price seems set to rise further on the news that a major nickel producer in Papua New Guinea may be closed down following a pollution incident.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-30/chinese-owned-mine-in-png-spills-200000-litres-of-toxic-slurry/11464108

This might be a good time to invest in nickel via an ETF like ETFS NICKEL ETC (LON:NICK) but I'd be interested to know what others think.

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About the Author

William K

Premium Member

Professional Spread Bettor

5 comments

HollandSmith

1st Sep '19

Is there an ETF for Nickel in £ instead of $?

cjg

1st Sep '19

I have also been following the surge in nickel price. The fundamentals based on steady growth in Stainless steel market plus the strong forecast demand from the EV market appear good. The price has also been helped over the last week as Indonesia has brought forward a ban on raw material exports. Given the huge price rise over the past month or so it would not be surprising to see prices levelling out in the short term.

I have sought to benefit by including an early stage AIM quoted nickel developer called Horizonte Minerals (HZM) in my portfolio. It’s been developing its resources for circa 8 years and has raised lots of money over that period. However at last it appears to be getting closerto generating revenue having just completed a royalty deal with Orion which is the first time it’s been able to raise external finance without diluting the shareholders.

Still early stage but it’s another ( albeit high risk/high reward) way of leveraging the nickel market. As ever it’s fortunes are highly linked to nickel prices and successful fund raising.

Appears to have a good quality management team and two tier one nickel resources, one of which can produce battery quality nickel in a relatively stable location - Brazil. Shareholder base also includes Teck and JP Morgan. NPV’s are starting to look more attractive as nickel rises. Plenty of info available on the company’s website and further news releases due shortly.

Disclosure - held a small stake at the beginning of the year which I have increased over the past 2 months.

William K

2nd Sep '19

HollandSmith. The only easily available ETF for Nickel in the UK is £NICK as far as I can see. It's worth checking to see if your broker charges foreign exchange rates for the purchase - apart from that it shouldn't make much difference to the value of your holding.

Incidentally nickel has already risen this morning (Monday 2nd September 2019) by 2% on the eastern markets. It may well level out, as cig says, or even retrace 5-10% but long term growth looks strong

HollandSmith

2nd Sep '19

Grrr! So, i have a system which scans every chart (Stocks/ETF) there is to pick out backtested moments of usual price acceleration. I have been head scratching to find out why NICK has never been traded in my system.

Turns out, that on the www.londonstockexchange.com Instrument Type for LON:NICK isnt a ETF but labelled ETP.

Its labelled an ETF on pretty much all website, on stocko and on my broker. But because its labelled a ETP on LSE i have completely missed it!

If anyone knows where LSE keeps full ETPS statistics on there website, could you let me know. Thanks!

William K

2nd Sep '19

I can't answer directly about the LSE but ig.com have a page giving constantly updated commodity prices and that's what I normally use in the first instance - and if a commodity appears interesting I then look for the relevant ETF, ETC, ETP or whatever and add it to my watchlist - you can do that with most brokers (I use HL) - or create a folio on Stockopedia with alerts.

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Nickel

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About the Author

William K

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