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Comment by credit_guy | Hacker News Reader

> The LME didn't disclose the name of the company that believed itself to be the owner of nickel briquettes valued at $1.3 million at current prices. The firm was JPMorgan, according to the people, some of whom said the bank first bought the material several years ago.

$1.3 million. JPMorgan. Nothing to see here people, move along.

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It’s still amusing that this happens to a big company and not just eBay buyers or whatnot. They buy a commodity and stuff it somewhere, then open it up much later to find its old newspaper and copies of ET for the Atari.

At least ebayers... open stuff up when it arrives.

A tale as old as history. Literally. https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/complaint-tablet-to-ea...

This is HN though. Shouldn’t we pull out all of our VC money from JPMorgan Chase, just to be safe? Tell all your friends.

Yes—and for many reasons, of which this is a teardrop in the ocean.

Yep. They just lost 0.000347% of their market cap! Let's start a bank run.

Everyone else that’s left their money there is just risking holding the bag!

Could this incident be a sign of a more widespread practice going under the radar, or does the fact that it was caught mean others would also have been caught?

The article mentioned that other metals owners and warehouses are going around double checking nickel in storage after this incident so if it is widespread we will find out shortly

Only if they acknowledge it. Lots of folks pretend it never happened to them.

There was a $577 million nickel fraud earlier this year.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/swiss-trader-trafigura-hit-by-s...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-man-trafigura-blames-for-a-...

Oh hey, Credit Suisse was involved. Imagine that.

Apparently (i don't know firsthand, but have friends in this game), this happens somewhat frequently. Physical commodity trading seems to be the wild wild west.

I think it's more of a "where there's smoke, there's fire" thing. Who would brazenly commit fraud like this over a $1.3 million shipment of nickel?

Apparently, it has been quite a profitable (and relatively expensive) metal to ship. Even most other metals like iron or steel are ~100x less expensive.

It's hard to tell from the article, but this could be another wrinkle in the Prateek Gupta and TMT metals fraud.

https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/trafigur...

Ah. Yes, a possible connection to a $577 million fraud case would seem to cast doubt on this being "an isolated case and specific to one warehouse in Rotterdam".

steel scrap is around $0.05/lb and has been under $0.02 before. at that point what do you really use for fill that won't stand out?

copper is cheaper than nickel and people bring in plate and hide weights in it all the time

Not to mention this falls on Access World Group (as a subsidiary of Glencore PLC) with Glencore (a mineral multinational) having 2022 revenues greater than $250 billion US per annum.

It's a literal rounding error (albeit likely evidence of warehouse theft) in an industry where operating nickel mines have a fleet of 100 tonne haulpaks each of which has an ownership cost of > $1.3 million (truck + tyres + maintainance + 24/7 crew costs).

The issue isn’t JPMC it’s LME. LME has a strong reputation for quality of service. This calls into question that reputation, and the damage of that is far in excess the $1.3m.

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