Katanga Clears Its Books, 25 October
A quiet Sunday on the wire, which in this business usually means the real movement happened in a meeting room rather than a port. Today it did, twice: once in Kinshasa, once in a departure lounge in Lubumbashi.
Kinshasa's uneasy calm. Two weeks after Joseph Kabila took formal command of the Front pour la refondation de la nation on 12 October in Goma, a coalition grown out of the AFC/M23 alliance, President Félix Tshisekedi told lawmakers from his Union Sacrée bloc on Saturday that the security situation was under control at every level. He called his predecessor a coward for turning weapons against a country he ran for eighteen years, and said he would name the coordinators of the promised national dialogue, two African Union co-facilitators included, within the week.
Lubumbashi's second sweep. Congo's migration directorate flew a second batch of foreign nationals out of Lubumbashi's Luano airport on 23 October: 21 Chinese and Filipino citizens found without valid residence papers, pulled from Haut-Katanga and Lualaba, the two provinces that between them host almost all of the country's copper and cobalt output. The DGM says the campaign is aimed at networks that facilitate irregular stays and work permits in the mining corridor, and that it intends to keep running these checks.
Diwali's price signal. India's domestic sugar market is pulling away from the world screen. Ex-mill prices in Maharashtra have climbed this week from around Rs 4,650 to Rs 5,050 to 5,100 per quintal, with Diwali, the calendar's biggest demand window, a fortnight out. The state now has 75 mills crushing, 2.6 million tonnes of cane processed so far this season. The global screen moved the other way: Sugar #11 fell to 447 USD/t.
Crude up, diesel down. Brent pushed to 111.70 USD/bbl, up 2.7% on the day, while ULSD diesel slid 2.8% to 1,498 USD/t. A crack spread moving in opposite directions on the same day is the kind of thing refiners and freight buyers will be re-pricing through the week.
What's still moving
Copper eased 0.9% to 14,348 USD/t on Comex. Cobalt sat flat at 34,620 USD/t, urea and DAP held their lines at 453 and 802.5 USD/t, and the Baltic Dry stayed parked at 2,660. Nothing there broke a level worth a paragraph of its own today, but all of it is one print away from needing one.