Risk & Energy Risk Commodity Rankings 2014: Metals

The past 12 months have seen plummeting gold prices, directionless base metals markets and a heated row over warehousing on the London Metal Exchange. Yet this has had little impact on our annual ranking of dealers and brokers, which remains largely unchanged. By Peter Madigan

Chinese demand has been vital to base metals prices in recent years, but it took on a new role in 2013, preventing sliding gold prices from collapsing entirely – dealers say the year’s one reliable trade was to be short gold in an otherwise meandering metals market.

“Gold has driven the drop in prices in the basket of metals over the course of 2013. The drop during 2013 was around 28% and at the same time we saw an increase in the value of the S&P 500 of exactly the same percentage, so investors