Explaining the Surge in the Nickel Price - Olivier Masson - Principal Analyst at FastMarkets

Hello and welcome back to the first episode of 2026 of The Power Current with me, your host Chris Berry. The Power Current is a production of the Clear Commodity Network.

With the metals markets defying gravity, we’ve seen some obvious no-brainers like lithium and copper and some surprises like gold and silver.

Despite that, coming into 2026, the market consensus for one metal in particular was quite bearish. This metal is nickel and it’s the topic of today’s discussion. Prices have rallied as much as 25% YTD and given the presumption of oversupply, tariffs, and batteries shifting away from nickel-heavy cathodes, I think it makes sense to look into what’s happening in this market.

Should we heed the words of Warren Buffett who said “When they’re cryin’, you should be buyin’ and when they’re yellin’ you should be sellin’?”

Here to answer that and other questions is today’s guest, Olivier Masson, Principal Mining analyst at FastMarkets who covers nickel as well as other battery metals. During this pod we look at the history of the nickel market, nickel’s outperformance YTD, supply and demand, pricing volatility, and the likelihood that this rally continues. I learned a lot here and hope you do as well.

If you are a nickel nerd and enjoyed this discussion, please share it far and wide and don’t forget to like and subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen.

Thanks again and we’ll see you next time.