While my primary focus for my thoughts in LawrieOnGold.com and on the other sites on which I publish articles is Precious Metals, as someone who has written about all aspects of metals and minerals in the past, I will occasionally publish articles on other aspects of the industry.  In this context, and in particular if you have an interest in base metals, do have a read of  my latest article on www.SeekingAlpha.com entitled GFMS tips nickel as best 2016 base metals performer, then copper.

GFMS is perhaps best known, and sometimes criticised, for its precious metals forecasting expertise and for the most part we’d consider its figures pretty reliable, although may quibble about particular aspects.  But it also devotes much of its activity on analysis of other aspects of the resource sector and thus this article is my comment on its latest forecasting for base metals prices in 2016 and beyond.  As the Seeking Alpha article suggests it is looking to nickel as being the likely best performer next year, followed by copper, whereas it sees a continuing poor performance for aluminium and lead, while zinc may just about see better things after being hotly tipped as the most likely high flyer a year ago.

Obviously the GFMS report was published ahead of the VW emissions scandal (the report contains a section on pgms too) and the latest Glencore move to cut a significant part of its zinc output, which has given the latter metal a substantial short term price boost, but overall the report is well worth reading.  Indeed those interested may apply to download a copy of the full report – and other GFMS reports – from https://forms.thomsonreuters.com/gfms/ .