WEEK IN REVIEW: The shape of things to come

A symbolic scientific discovery that passed without much notice back in October gained sudden publicity this week.
Harvard scientists claimed success in turning hydrogen — the non-metallic gas that heads the periodic table — into metallic form by applying extreme pressure.
But while some are rushing to hail the birth of a new superconductor, other scientists are sceptical. Is the material, only observed when squeezed in the super-pressured diamond vice, actually the long-sought hydrogen metal? Or is it something more mundane?
The metal markets don’t come out of winter hibernation in earnest until after the lunar new year holidays in China. After some aggressive selling from China, partly motivated by the strong US dollar, next week will mark a long pause for a rethink. So after last year’s pressures, will metal markets emerge into the new year stronger and shinier?
Will the year ahead be a close rerun of 2016, as some market participants predicted over the past few months, or will it transform into something else entirely? Watch this space in February and March.
As the world’s largest metal supplier and consumer, China, moves from the old year into the new, this has been a week of transition on both sides of the Pacific and the Atlantic. In the US there was a transition from President Barack Obama’s administration to President Donald Trump’s. And as the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations began to abandon hope of a free-trade deal with the US, the UK, geared to break from the European Union and started to angle for a US deal of its own. The UK prime minister’s visit to Washington comes today as Mexico …
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Source: Metal Pages