Global aluminium short-term outlook July 2018

The aluminium market service short term outlook (STO) is published monthly and provides a forecast of aluminium supply and demand fundamentals over the next two-years. July was another busy month with heightened price and spread volatility and lower than expected smelter output in both China and outside. A ratcheting up of rhetoric and action in the current global trade war also weighed heavily on investor sentiment. With the market in a risk-off mode, LME prices broke through a number of key support levels during the month, moving the price to below the $2100/t level by month- end. Prices have also been under pressure from the softer stance being taken by the US Treasury on the Rusal sanction, though we suspect that much of this was already built into the price. We expect the market to remain on edge in the run up to the Rusal 5 August deadline for investors to divest holdings.