The London Metal Exchange has suspended electronic trading in nickel almost immediately after the market reopened following a week of shutdown.
The exchange’s algorithm discovered an opening price of $45,590 a tonne for three-month nickel but a system error allowed trades below this lower daily price limit. The LME suspended trading on its LMEselect platform to investigate the error but allowed in-person trading to go ahead.
The LME halted nickel trading on 8 March after disorderly trading caused by the war in Ukraine forced the price to double to more than $100,000 a tonne. Rising prices were exacerbated by a short squeeze as traders tried to cover bets made against nickel.
The surge was fuelled by Xiang Guangda, a Chinese tycoon, struggling to meet margin calls on a large bet against nickel that went wrong. LME elected to restart trading on Wednesday after Xiang reached a deal with counterparties to avoid further margin calls.
“The LME will continue to investigate the IT system error and will update the market in due course as to a future reopening of the nickel market on LMEselect,” the exchange said in a statement. “The LME will make every effort to reopen LMEselect for Nickel trading as soon as possible.”
