Daily metals

The complex trades broadly weaker against Thursday's official close, with tin and zinc leading declines. Tin slips 2.0% to 49,000 from 50,009 and zinc loses 1.1% to 3,398 from 3,434.5. Copper softens 0.8% to 13,120 from 13,227.58, aluminium drops 0.7% to 3,130 from 3,153.2 and nickel is essentially flat at 16,630 (-0.1%). Lead bucks the trend, firming 0.7% to 1,893 from 1,878.9. The base complex is heading for a heavy weekly loss as the post-ceasefire risk-premium unwind, a resurgent dollar and persistent Fed rate-hike anxiety overwhelm Thursday's brief bargain-hunting bounce. Macro & Geopolitics Risk sentiment turned sharply lower overnight after Apple announced iPad and MacBook price hikes to absorb soaring memory-chip costs, wiping roughly $250 billion off its market value and sending Nasdaq futures down 1.7%. South Korea's KOSPI plunged 8%, triggering a circuit breaker, while the Nikkei shed 5%. Thursday's U.S. May PCE confirmed headline inflation above 4% for the first time in three years, keeping three Fed hikes in play with September pricing near 64%. Brent slid toward four-month lows around $73.9 as more tankers cleared Hormuz, though a vessel strike near Oman kept the ceasefire fragile. Goolsbee and Williams stressed inflation remains too high. The IMF said Gulf energy, fertiliser and base-metals prices are falling but full normalisation will take time. Base Metals Thursday's bounce proved short-lived. LME copper is set for a weekly loss of more than 3%, weighed by the strong dollar and hawkish-Fed macro despite supportive micro signals — LME stocks continue to drain, Yangshan premiums hit a three-week high and CME warehouse inflows accelerate ahead of next week's expected U.S. tariff recommendation. Andy Home flags a structural shift: with benchmark TC/RCs at zero and spot fees negative, Chinese smelters now derive over 75% of income from "free metal" and by-product credits, while Western smelters — Glencore's Philippine and Australian units already stressed — face an existential squeeze. Aluminium has shed about 6% on the week as the Hormuz risk premium evaporates; SHFE hit a 2026 low Thursday. Nickel, zinc and tin all dropped in Asian trade with tin off 2.5%. Indonesia's undecided 2026 nickel quota keeps supply guidance murky. Precious Metals Gold is heading for a fourth straight weekly loss of around 4%, trading near $3,990 after slipping below $4,000 on Wednesday for the first time since November 2025. OANDA's Kelvin Wong sees the correction extending toward $3,400 longer-term; bullion is now down 29% from January's $5,594.82 peak. Silver was crushed a further 3% to around $56, taking monthly losses near 25%; platinum eased to $1,563 and palladium to $1,166. China's net gold imports via Hong Kong fell 38% m/m in May to 53.7 tons, though the PBoC extended its buying streak to a 19th month. Ghana will lift state purchases to 30% of large miners' output from 1 July. Steel UK steel policy crystallised: from 1 July, tariff-free import quotas will be cut by 51% (versus 60% previously proposed), with a 50% tariff above-quota — up from 25%. Total quota volume of about 3.2 million tons is 21% higher than the March draft after user pushback, and London has agreed reciprocal access with the EU to preserve cross-Channel supply chains. UK Steel welcomed a "much stronger trade regime" while the BCC cautiously backed the rebalancing. Separately, Mexico renewed five-year anti-dumping duties on U.S. welded carbon steel pipe. Chinese steel benchmarks slipped further on SHFE, with rebar -0.6% and HRC -0.5%, as portside iron ore stocks rose 1.3% w/w to 175.4 million tons and summer heat curbed construction demand. Rare Earth Metals The Western midstream build-out continues to accelerate. The Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital has now committed over $1.2 billion of conditional rare-earth loans in June alone — including $500 million to Phoenix Tailings for a molten-salt "Freedom Facility" and $725 million to Energy Fuels for White Mesa heavy-REE expansion. The urgency is real: U.S. imports of yttrium, dysprosium and terbium are running roughly 50% below pre-restriction levels under China's partial export-control truce, which expires 10 November. NdPr remains near $90/kg domestic China — up ~70% YTD despite a June pullback — while terbium surged 22.8% in June to $970/kg. For European magnet buyers, the bifurcation between Chinese and ex-China prices (up to 5x) is widening structurally. Forex The euro is pinned near $1.135, on track for a 2.6% monthly loss against a dollar index holding at 101.5 — its highest since May 2025. Fed-ECB policy divergence remains the dominant driver: U.S. PCE above 4% has cemented hike bets while Bund yields fell 12 bps on the week as traders trim ECB tightening expectations. For European scrap and metal buyers, the FX headwind continues to offset much of the USD price weakness in LME contracts. Sterling firmed modestly on the UK steel-quota clarity but remains heavy. The yen sits at 161.7 against the dollar, on the brink of breaching the 1986 low at 161.96 and keeping Tokyo intervention risk acute. Watch Today French May unemployment at 10:00 GMT and final June University of Michigan sentiment and inflation expectations at 14:00 GMT are the day's data prints. Minneapolis Fed's Neel Kashkari speaks — any echo of this week's Goolsbee/Williams hawkish tone would reinforce the dollar bid into month-end. Watch for month- and quarter-end rebalancing flows, which analysts cite as amplifying this week's tech and base-metals volatility.