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Black and non-ferrous metals are one of the most reliable and stable forms of capital storage. Long-term investments in black, non-ferrous and rare-earth metals can bring an investor not a particularly high but guaranteed profit. As for the current situation on the world market, it is appropriate to evaluate it with regard to black and non-ferrous metals separately. So, the situation on the black metals market and the experts' forecasts are rather disappointing. The black metals market demonstrates low stability and analysts predict losses for most companies-producers including companies of a global scale. Unlike the ferrous metals market, the non-ferrous metals market demonstrates growth and stability. Therefore, investments in non-ferrous metals are not as risky and are capable of bringing a greater profit.

The price of nickel reflects the mood in the steel sector since nickel is one of the most important components for steel production. The dynamics of nickel daily chart can be judged on the state of metal-intensive sectors of industry in particular and metallurgy in general. In addition, nickel price live chart can serve as an indicator of the engineering sector, which uses many alloyed steels. Nevertheless, the dynamics of nickel prices can help predict the general mood in the sector. Nickel, like most metals, is traded on the LME - the London Metal Exchange. You can check the cost of nickel for today on nickel rate live as well as the history of quotes for the past period.

Experts Goldman Sachs predict that the price of nickel this and next year will remain very low. Such quotes, according to Yubin Fu and Jeffrey Curry, will continue in 2018 - until, firstly, the excess of metal in the market will not go to zero and, secondly, until the volume of nickel supplies decreases. Liquidity problems and rising interest rates in China, the world's largest nickel consumer, probably triggered a reduction in metal stocks by end users and traders, which had a negative impact on prices, according to Goldman Sachs. According to the forecast of Yubin Fu and Jeffrey Curry, the price on the nickelium live chart in the next 3-6 and even 12 months will be about $9000 per ton. Excess nickel had been equivalent to 37,000 tons by the end of last year, while the surplus promises to be even more at the end of 2018 - 100,000 tons.

Looking back, the price of nickel reached a mark of $12,145 per ton in November 2016, after which there was a rapid decline; that can be explained by concerns about the extraction of nickel in the Philippines. Metal prices fell by 9% in early 2017, which was the worst result among all metals participating in LME (London Metal Exchange) trades.

The only producer of nickel concentrate in South Africa is Norilsk Nickel Nkomati, is a joint venture of Norilsk Nickel and African Rainbow Minerals (Norilsk Nickel's share is 50%). The aggregate capacity of the ore processing plants of the ore processing plant is 625,000 tons per month. Estimating the value of Nkomati stocks is a difficult task. Its price can fluctuate in very large limits depending on the world price of nickel. However, investments in the extraction of minerals are made not only on the basis of world prices at a particular period of time since mines durability are often much more than 20 years. Thus, the cost of the mine depends on how we assess the demand and world prices for its products in the long run. At the time when negotiations to sell the Nkomati began to take place, the parties assessed the outlook for nickel prices in a more optimistic manner than most analysts.

To some people, Norilsk Nickel South Africa seems like a beneficial investment for several reasons:

• It holds leading positions in world markets. It is arguably a leader in the nickel and palladium market, one of the largest producer of platinum and in the top-10 for the production of refined copper.
• It has a promising basket of metals because of high quality of raw materials base in the industry. The resource base of Norilsk has the largest proven and probable ore reserves. The ore reserves are characterized by a high content of all the basic metals in the ore (nickel, copper, platinum and palladium).
• It has the lowest cost of production in comparison with competitors in the industry.
• It poses as an attractive portfolio of investment projects. There is an attractive correlation of projects of existing assets development to new projects with an internal rate of return confirmed by stress tests.
• Quotes of nickel are not as volatile as gold quotes.

In general, nickel quotes are volatile but their growth has recently been supported by growing market concerns about the prospects for the supply of metal. After settling down to $10,740 per ton in early December, nickel prices rose amid a fall in metal reserves at LME to the lowest values  in 3 years, while world producers increased the demand for raw materials. Concern about the adequacy of nickel trend today is growing, although Indonesian PT Aneka Tambang has increased production and sales of nickel ore. In 2017, the company sold 2.8 million tons of this raw material.

The key advantage of going nickel rate road is liquidity. By investing in metals, investors get the opportunity to buy or sell the instruments without any difficulty and long delays. Another plus of investing in metals is a large selection of possible investment strategies. This can be both short-term and long-term investments as well as investments in the extraction of metal, its processing and so on. Finally, the advantage of investing in metals lies in the openness of the market, convenience and simplicity of its analysis. At any time, an investor can access the charts and comparative tables describing prices for ferrous and non-ferrous metals, see the dynamics of growth or fall in prices and draw certain conclusions about the problems and the expected profitability of investments.

However, investments in metals are also associated with certain risks. The main risk is that metals can fall in price or rise in price quite unexpectedly and, in addition, they are not able to give investors additional income (unlike, for example, from real estate that can be leased and you can receive a stable monthly profit). The second significant disadvantage is the low entry threshold for investments in metals. Perhaps, for novice investors, this will rather be a plus - but still, income from investing in metals will be very modest with a small starting capital.