What happened
Aluminum stocks were looking shiny on Tuesday, with Alcoa (AA +2.06%) closing the trading session up 9.8% and smaller Century Aluminum (CENX +2.75%) rising by 11.9%.
No huge secret why: Aluminum just hit its highest price in 13 years.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
Bloomberg has the details. The price of aluminum on the London Metals Exchange hit $3,236 a ton on Monday, its highest price since 2008. What's more, this could be only the beginning.
Goldman Sachs, for example, is forecasting that aluminum could surge to as much as $4,000 a ton this year as "exceptional" demand for the metal meets constrained output from China, which is rationing power and pinching production. Adding to the difficulties, Russia is courting new international economic sanctions as it bullies Ukraine. And if Russia's psychological warfare should turn into an actual shooting war (as has happened there before), exports of aluminum from Russia could get shut down entirely.
Now what
In the context of already "critically low" inventories of aluminum globally, warns Bloomberg, bleak scenarios such as this one have Goldman Sachs thinking that "aluminum markets are facing a melt-up in prices this year."
That would obviously be bad news for the industrial manufacturing companies that will have to buy aluminum, whatever the price. On the other hand, for investors in metals producers outside of Russia and China, the prospect of higher prices is just one more good reason to buy shares of companies like Alcoa and Century Aluminum.
