About three-quarters of the world's nickel raw materials will be mixed with chromium to make stainless steel, which is mainly used in electrical appliances, machinery and tableware. Unlike crude oil, natural gas, wheat, rice and soybean (6 16 1, -2.00, -0.03%), these metals are not high consumption, but only non-necessities that can be purchased at one time. Only when food or energy prices rise will prices interfere with the cost of living for a long time. Because people buy these necessities every day, their price fluctuations are more sensitive.

There are two grades of nickel: the nickel traded on the London Metal Exchange is the so-called first-class nickel, and the purity must reach at least 99.8%. About half of the nickel on the market is secondary nickel with low refining degree, and most of it exists in the form of ferronickel and nickel pig iron.

These two grades of nickel are usually produced from completely different ores. Nickel sulfide ore is very suitable to be processed into high-purity products such as first-class nickel, but it is relatively scarce, and its origin is limited to a few places in temperate zone. In recent years, the popular recycled nickel in the market is mainly produced by laterite nickel ore, which is a low-grade ore and can be easily stripped from weathered land in Southeast Asia and other tropical regions.

In addition, Russia only accounts for about 9% of nickel supply, but it has nearly one-third of the world's nickel sulfide ore. Therefore, it has caused great interference to the price of first-grade nickel traded in LME.