Nickel futures traded around the $21,000 per tonne mark, not far from their 10-month bottom touched on May 18th, as the outlook remained dampened, with output surpassing demand and global economic slowdown fears pressuring prices on the prospects of further monetary tightening by major central banks. The International Nickel Study Group said the nickel market faces the largest demand-supply surplus in at least a decade amid higher production from Indonesia and the Philippines. The country's output has already grown to 1.58 million tonnes in the previous year, accounting for nearly half the worldwide supply. Meanwhile, on the demand side, China's unstable recovery weighed on the sentiment. Furthermore, nickel remained the worst-performing contract on the LME so far in 2023, dropping by over 20%.
Historically, Nickel reached an all time high of 54050 in May of 2007. Nickel - data, forecasts, historical chart - was last updated on June of 2023.
Nickel is expected to trade at 20266.34 USD/MT by the end of this quarter, according to Trading Economics global macro models and analysts expectations. Looking forward, we estimate it to trade at 17980.08 in 12 months time.