When supply exceeds demand, prices fall, and vice versa. Price in turn affects supply and demand. As prices rise, supply will increase and demand will decrease. On the contrary, demand will increase, supply will decrease, and price and supply and demand will interact.

An important indicator reflecting the relationship between supply and demand is inventory. The inventory of lead is divided into reported inventory and non-reported inventory. Declared inventory, also known as "explicit inventory", refers to the inventory of the exchange. Unreported inventory, also known as "hidden inventory", refers to the inventory held by manufacturers, traders and consumers all over the world. Because these inventories are published irregularly, it is difficult to make statistics, so stock exchange inventories are generally used to measure inventory changes.

2. International and domestic economic development

Lead is an important non-ferrous metal, and its consumption is highly related to economic development. When the economy of a country or region develops rapidly, the consumption of lead will also increase simultaneously. Similarly, economic recession will lead to a decline in lead consumption in some industries, which will lead to lead price fluctuations. When analyzing macro-economy, two indicators are very important, one is economic growth rate, or GDP growth rate, and the other is industrial production growth rate.

3. The prosperity of downstream industries

Lead is mainly used in lead-acid batteries, which are mainly used in automobiles, communication power supplies, electric bicycles, etc., so the downstream demand industries of lead are relatively concentrated, and the prosperity of these industries directly affects the consumption of lead. By analyzing the changes of these downstream industries, we can have a comprehensive grasp of lead consumption.

4. Import and export policies

Import and export policy, especially tariff policy, is an important means to control the import and export volume of a certain commodity and balance domestic supply and demand by adjusting the import and export cost of commodities. Due to the rapid growth of domestic demand and the increasingly prominent resource bottleneck, the state does not encourage the export of smelting products with high energy consumption.

The change of China's trade policy is obviously reflected in the export of refined lead. In 2006, the trade policy stipulated to cancel the export tax rebate of refined lead, and before the implementation, a large amount of refined lead was exported centrally, which made the export volume reach a record high that year. Exports fell sharply in 2007. In 2009, supported by the price comparison at home and abroad, the import volume of refined lead increased substantially, exceeding the export volume, and China became a net importer of refined lead for the first time.

At present, China implements 3% import tariff and 10% export tariff on refined lead.

5. Production cost of lead

Production cost is the basis of measuring commodity price level. Different mines and smelting enterprises calculate the production cost of lead differently. The most common economic analysis is to adopt "cash flow guarantee cost", which decreases with the increase of by-product value. In the lead smelting process, the by-product silver output is more, so the price change of silver also affects the lead production cost.