5 Year Nickel Prices - Nickel Price Chart

Indonesia, considered the Saudi Arabia of nickel production, has banned exports of unprocessed material, meaning domestic producers won't be able to ship their cheap ore to China for processing anymore.

The move has huge implications for the global nickel market, according to the Financial Post's Peter Koven:

Miners in Indonesia have provided roughly a quarter of global supply during the past four years. Most of that is poised to vanish because of this law, as it will take years for companies to build costly ferro nickel plants to process ore. In the meantime, many will have to shut down; the government figures that ore production will drop to nine million tonnes in 2014, down from more than 47 million last year, according to a report.

Not all investors are convinced the export ban will be enough to drive nickel prices higher.

“There’s a lot of new supply coming online in an oversupplied market. So I just can’t get too excited about nickel,” said Steve Parsons, an analyst at National Bank Financial.

Source: This weekend the world of nickel investing turned upsidedown | Financial Post