- I entered metals business in 1968; 2018 was my 50th year. I was involved in nickel from day one. In 1969 International Nickel Company (INCO: now owned by Vale) had a protracted and bitter strike in Sudbury, Canada. Price of nickel cathode increased by a factor of six. As a rookie trader I was up to my eyes in nickel deals and and alloys containing nickel, I have been in nickel business ever since.
- I started and managed first stainless steel and nickel alloy scrap metals division for Commercial Metals Company (CMC), Houston Texas.
- Accepted an offer from Dominion Nickel Alloys, relocated to Toronto Canada and worked for original partners.
- Worked for Steelmet Inc. Pittsburgh and Los Angeles – Steelmet at the time was the largest stainless steel and nickel alloy scrap company in North America. ELG Metals, Inc. bought Steelmet to enter U.S. market.
- Worked for ELG Metals (14 years later): Negotiated nickel-cobalt custom feed (scrap solids, turnings, grindings) contracts with Falconbridge Nickel (now owned by Glencore). I was responsible for traveling to Saint Petersburg Russia to negotiate custom feed contracts with Norilsk-Severonickel. Also responsible for ELG’s tungsten carbide business.
- As partner of U.S. company Global Metals and Plastics, I lived and worked five years in Beijing China. I was COO and board member of BIAM Alloys Co., Ltd. BIAM Alloys was a joint venture between Global Metals and Plastics and Chinese state-owned enterprise BIAM/AVIC. Purpose of JV was buying, processing, selling high performance nickel alloys and titanium alloys scrap. We bought aerospace scrap materials from industrial manufacturing companies and recycled into value added downstream products.
- Managing Partner and President ZStainless, LLC. Traveled extensively in India to oversee joint venture with Indian partners. ZStainless purchased ISRI-zurik from auto shredding companies in North America and exported material to India. Zurik is a heterogeneous mixture of predominately stainless steel with pieces of aluminum, brass, copper… Commodity percentages was unknown until material was hand sorted and could not be hedged in advance. Stainless steel was sold to mills/nonferrous metals to foundries.
- We really needed to know why the price was the price and not just the price. We needed to determine market direction in order to make informed buying decisions. I researched and discovered a plethora of: stochastic oscillators, Bollinger Bands, candlestick charts, moving averages, relative strength indexes and commitment of traders data. I studied technical analysis in 2000 and using the past to predict the future did not work for me. I read many inaccurate articles and questionable reports. Everyone told me the price but no one told me why the price was the price. I continued to research until I connected the dots. I believe others whose business model involves nickel would like to know. In 2016 I created Nickel28.biz to explain to subscribers why the price of nickel is what it is.