HOW METAL PRICES ARE FIXED

Evening Star, Issue 19841, 14 April 1928, Page 10

HOW METAL PRICES ARE FIXED

“ What they decide day by day rules the price of metals throughout the world,” writes “ A Metal Exchange Broker,” in the ‘Evening News’ of London concerning the London Metal Exchange. Ho adds; “It is appropriate that the meetings of these merchants should he called ‘ rings.’ Each ‘ ring ’ is called to its incantations by the clanging of a bell. The interested parties sit round a table, and as opportunity offers they ring the changes on ono another. The first tin 1 ring ’ is held each day at 12.10 p.m. It lasts for exactly ten minutes. Then a bell rings to announce the starting of a copper ring. And so it goes on. The first ring is used chiefly for ‘ sounding tho market.’ It shows how much tin is on offer at home and abroad, and what is the prevailing tone of the market. The second tin 1 ring ’ begins at 12.40. This, too, lasts for ten minutes. The third and final 1 ring ’ forms at 1.20. It lasts but five minutes. “Tho third ‘ring’ is the most important of the day, and very often it produces real excitement. Big amounts of tin, sometimes running into thousands of tons, are then thrown on the market, and the figures which rule on its close become the ruling price of tin for the day throughout the world. Forthwith they are cabled all over the earth, to Bolivia ('where the miner in the Andes hews his tin from the rich lodes in the mountain side), to MJalaya (where the Chinese extract the tin from the alluvial soil), to .Australia, Burma, Siam, Cornwall, and elsewhere. And on these ruling prices each and every seller in every part of the world bases bis calculations.” ,