What the spot price won't tell you: the shape of the futures curve (who's paying up for metal now) and where warehouse stock is heading. Figures are indicative until a live LME/CME feed is wired.
Nickel
Contango+3.7% / yr1-yr roll -3.8%
Deferreds trade over spot — comfortable supply and positive carry. A long rolling the front bleeds the spread.
LME forward (indicative)
Building+93.5% (12 mo)LME
Latest 178 kt · LME stock report (indicative)
Nickel is really two markets: class 1 (the high-purity stuff batteries want) and class 2 (ferronickel, NPI, the stainless feed). Indonesia's laterite-and-HPAL build-out, much of it China-backed, has reshaped the whole cost curve and torched a lot of Western producers' economics.
With high-cost Australian nickel idled, two sulphide developers — Centaurus Metals' Jaguar in Brazil and Lunnon Metals' Baker at Kambalda — are advancing first-quartile, Class-1-bound projects into a structurally tighter market.
A wall of Indonesian laterite and HPAL capacity, much of it China-backed, has flattened the cost curve and left a graveyard of Western nickel producers. Pretending class 1 and class 2 are the same metal is how you misread the whole thing.
Global Mining & Metals · JULY 31, 2026