I’m interested in learning more about the value of metals from steel up to gold. I know that gold value is announced twice a day (I think), but how are the rates for aluminum, steel, copper, etc set? I’ve done some searching but can’t find any solid answers and often end up on a site for people in the industry and I don’t understand all the jargon involved. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
I’m in the business of buying/selling gold and silver. We use www.kitco.com to inform us on an instant basis what the spot prices are of precious metals such as gold, silver, platinum and palladium. They also have the ability to show you live quotes for non-precious metals.
Just click on “all metal quotes.”
Thanks sam for replying. On that site, It’s the London Gold Fix and the Silver & PGM’s charts that show the price in ounces, right? OK, so gold prices are reported twice a day, what about the other precious metals?
About the non-precious metals, I clicked the “All Metal” tab which led me to a page where I clicked the “base metals” link on the left. I see copper, aluminum, zinc, nickel,and lead in what I’m assuming is price per pound? How often are these prices set? Is there a universal price for steel?
You can look at the London “fix” which is done twice a day, but the price on the world market changes every minute. We go by whatever market is actively trading at the moment we need to make a buy or sell. Same for the non-precious metals.
When I was buying aerospace alloy components all of my suppliers referenced Ryan’s Notesas the benchmark. Cobalt, nickel, chrome, palladium, rhenium…stuff like that. I did not do much spot buying, so the daily price was good enough.
You could lose your mind trying to keep up with the fluctuations.
The client I work for right now is in the metal recovery business. One of their sources for raw materials is scrap metals, which they pay for according to metal cleanliness/purity/physical state (aluminum shavings that have been collected and kept clean are worth more than aluminum shavings that come mixed with dirt and organic trash), using “London prices”.
London Metal Exchange is a global market that deals with non-ferrous metals.