Last week, nickel broke through key technical levels to reach its highest point since 2015 as a sharply weaker dollar helped push dollar-denominated industrial metals higher by making them cheaper for users of other currencies. Benchmark nickel on the London Metal Exchange closed up 1.9 percent at $12,935 a ton after touching $13,200, the highest since June 2015.
Nickel, used to make stainless steel, burst above a long-term downtrend line from 2011 at around $12,800 and resistance at $13,000, triggering technical buying. Traders said reports of production outages at nickel mines in the Zambales region of the Philippines, a major exporter, could be helping drive prices higher.
Expectations of healthy demand for metals were bolstered after the World Bank forecast global economic growth of 3.1 percent in 2018, up from three percent last year.