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1. Gold has traded between $1,270 and $1,279 so far today…as of 7:00 am Pacific, the metal is off $5 an ounce at $1,271…nearest technical support is $1,260…Silver has retreated 12 cents to $16.71…Copper is steady at $3.10 while Nickel has jumped 11 cents to $5.35…Crude Oil is relatively flat at $54.02 while the U.S. Dollar Index has added one-fifth of a point to 94.63…the Bank of Japan today kept its monetary policy steady after a 2-day meeting…the central bank said it would maintain the short-term interest rate at minus 0.1%…meanwhile, China’s official manufacturing PMI for October has come in at 51.6, slightly below the consensus estimate of 52.0…the official servies PMI was also a bit lower than expected at 54.3…however, this doesn’t change the broad picture of continuing steady growth in China which is underpinning the metals sector…

2. Reuters ran a piece this morning highlighting how battery makers are increasingly turning to Nickel to help power growing global electric car sales, but only half of the world’s producers of the metal are likely to benefit according to mining analysts and executives quoted in the article…the battery boom promises a new and growing market for miners producing high-grade Nickel products…however, half of the world’s supply of the metal, comprising so-called ferroNickel and Nickel pig iron grades, is unsuitable for battery production…some of the biggest producers of the higher-grade ores, including BHP Norilsk Nickel, Vale and Sumitomo Corp., are moving quickly to take advantage and seal long-term supply deals with battery producers (Norilsk, for example, announced a tie-up with the German battery maker BASF)…battery growth is going to disrupt the Nickel market in the major way and put a premium on the discovery of new high-grade Nickel sulphide deposits…

3. The London Metal Exchange announced yesterday that it’s planning to launch futures contracts for battery metals as early as the start of 2019, the latest example of how the commodities market is hoping to capitalize on the push toward electric vehicles…the LME will “be working with the battery and electric-vehicle industries over the coming months to deliver new contracts such as Lithium and Cobalt sulfate to bring price risk management to this rapidly growing market,” the exchange’s CEO Matthew Chamberlain said in a statement…according to a report this morning in the Wall Street Journal, in order for the world’s auto fleet to convert to EVs, hybrid battery makers would have to cut by half the amount of Cobalt they currently use in each battery at current supply levels of the metal…makers of full-electric batteries would only be able to use one-seventh of current levels…Lithium provokes similar forecasts…if cars across the globe were to convert to EVs using current technology, the battery sector’s hunger for Lithium could increase 3-fold according to some estimates…

4. Federal Reserve officials started their 2-day policy meeting this morning amid fresh signs that inflation remains lower than they would like, despite strong economic growth and increasingly bullish consumer sentiment (consumer confidence for October, reported this morning, exceeded expectations as it jumped to 125.9, its highest level since December 2000)…the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, the price index for personal-consumption expenditures, rose 1.6% in September from a year earlier, the Commerce Department reported yesterday…that is up from its 1.4% year-over-year gain in August but still well below the Fed’s 2% annual target…

5. Reuters reported this morning, citing an unnamed source, that President Trump is likely to pick Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell as the next head of the U.S. central bank…the Republican President, who in recent weeks has been considering Powell, current Fed Chair Janet Yellen and 3 others for the top central bank job including “hawk” John Taylor, will announce his decision on Thursday, a White House official said separately…by picking Powell, a soft-spoken centrist and Fed governor since 2012, Trump would get the combination of a leadership change and the continuity offered by somebody who has been a part of the Yellen-run Fed that has kept the economy and markets steady in recent years…the 64-year-old Powell has supported Yellen’s general direction in setting monetary policy, and in recent years has shared her concerns that weak inflation justified a continued cautious approach to raising interest rates…

6. The market for bitcoin continues to expand – CME announced today that it plans to launch bitcoin futures later this quarter pending regulatory review.  “Given increasing client interest in the evolving cryptocurrency markets, we have decided to introduce a bitcoin futures contract,” stated Terry Duffy, CME Group Chairman and CEO…in August, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the largest U.S. options exchange, said its CBOE Futures Exchange plans to offer cash-settled bitcoin futures by late this year or early 2018, pending review from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission…

7. The Dow is off 7 points through the first 30 minutes of trading…in Toronto, the TSX is building on its first-ever move past 16,000…Canada’s economy unexpectedly contracted in August, adding to signs of a faster-than-expected cooling following a torrid pace of growth in the 1st half of this year…that bodes well for a “dovish” central bank well into next year…data released this morning showed the Canadian economy posted its first monthly decline in August since October 2016 and follows a flat reading in July…goods producing industries and the Oil and gas sector suffered the most…the Venture is flat at 784 as of 7:00 am Pacific…in an example of the growing appetite for Lithium plays in Argentina, Neo Lithium (NLC, TSX-V) has announced a $20 million bought deal financing at $1.95 per share with a syndicate of underwriters led by Cormark Securities…

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