The 18 minutes of trading chaos that broke the nickel market
When the price of nickel shot skyward last week, it plunged the industry into chaos, triggering billions of dollars in losses and leading the LME to suspend trading for the first time in three decades.
It was 5.42 am on March 8 in London when the nickel market broke. At that time of day, bleary-eyed traders are typically just glancing at prices as they swig coffee on their way to the office.
On this day, however, metal traders were glued to a screen, watching the price action on the electronic market, which was already open to accommodate Asian trading. Nickel prices usually move a few hundred dollars per tonne in a day. For most of the past decade, they’d traded between $US10,000 ($13,700) and $US20,000.
