Osaka Mercantile Exchange Aluminium Futures Weekly Review

On March 13, despite the yen's strength, OME Aluminium Futures opened slightly firmer with distant January contract at 171.9 yen, up 1.0 yen from the last Friday's close on hort-covering as LME three-month aluminium recovered the $1,600 level. On March 16, distant January contract advanced to 173.0 yen on short-covering as LME Aluminium rose further following the firmer tone in the copper market. At the end of the week, however, distant January contract failed to extend the gains on long-liquidation and closed at 171.8 yen as players took a wait-and-see attitude ahead of three consecutive holidays. The news that the European Commission authorized the Alcan's buy of Alusuisse and that Russian Novokuznetsk aluminium resumed exports, seemed to give no impact on the market.

Both OME and LME went marginally higher with the support downside as the stocks at LME's designated warehouses decreased by about 50,000 tonnes as of March 17 from the end of February, 2000. However, players were unable to grasp the direction of the market throughout the week in the absence of other encouraging factors. With no leads specific to the aluminium market, players expect that the prices will be contingent upon the movement in ther base metal markets and the currency market in the short term. This week's total volume of trading was 34,182 lots. The open interest was 56,941 lots as of March 17.

OME has established "Conference for Establishing Metal Markets" for the purpose of launching one or two base metals in the spring next year. The proceeding of this conference will be based on the recent report published by Kansai Bureau of International Trade and Industry. The report suggests copper, lead, zinc and nickel as possibilities.