Today (May 22), the Huabao Nonferrous Metals ETF (159876), which has strong performance but lagging price action, may be catching up. Its intraday gains reached 1.87% in early trading and currently stand at 1.78%. Within less than an hour of the market open, real-time turnover exceeded 45 million yuan, indicating active trading.
Leading the charge, aluminum sector frontrunners are advancing. Henan Mingtai Al.Industrial Co.,Ltd. surged over 8%, Huafon Aluminium gained more than 4%, Zhongfu Industrial and Tianshan Aluminum both rose over 3%. Additionally, copper industry leader Hailiang advanced over 5%, while minor metal leaders Yunnan Chihong Zinc & Germanium and Yunnan Tin Company rose by more than 4% and 3% respectively.
Why is the nonferrous metals sector performing strongly today? Looking at specific segments: 1. **Aluminum**: Since 2026, China's aluminum processing industry has entered a high-growth cycle with robust production and sales, with companies operating at full capacity and order books full. Middle East tensions are disrupting global aluminum supply. China, leveraging its resilient industrial chain, is absorbing overseas orders transferred abroad. Coupled with explosive demand from sectors like new energy vehicles and energy storage, expectations for rising aluminum prices are strong. CITIC Securities believes that May will officially mark the start of domestic inventory destocking in China, finally removing the "mountain" suppressing domestic aluminum prices and providing upward momentum. 2. **Lithium**: Supply disruptions combined with recovering demand have driven lithium carbonate futures prices up approximately 186% year-to-date. Northeast Securities points out that, without considering the potential uncontrollable impacts of non-compliant mining permits in Jiangxi and Zimbabwe's ban on lithium concentrate exports, a persistent hard deficit is expected from 2026 to 2027. Factoring in those potential impacts, the industry's supply-demand gap is likely to widen further. 3. **Tin**: A mismatch between industry demand and supply has driven up prices for various tin metal products in China. Guohai Securities notes that on the demand side, traditional sectors are stable with growth, while the AI wave is leading a new growth curve, resulting in structurally high growth for tin demand. On the supply side, resource constraints and frequent disruptions in major producing countries are intensifying supply rigidity. The outlook is positive for a systematic rise in the central price level of tin.
Looking ahead, institutions generally believe the nonferrous metals sector's performance has room for upside: CITIC Securities argues that the US dollar credit cycle, combined with the Kondratiev cycle (technology), supports a significant rise in nonferrous metals prices. However, this cycle also has distinct characteristics: First, due to supply rigidity and demand resilience, the cyclical volatility of nonferrous metals is greatly reduced this round, with profit stability significantly improved, warranting a higher valuation for equity assets. Second, driven by explosive technology demand, minor metals exhibit extreme elasticity this cycle, and new material companies with global competitiveness are experiencing explosive growth. At the current juncture, besides precious and industrial metals, focus should be on elements of new quality productive forces, especially rhenium, uranium, tin, and nickel. China Galaxy Securities believes the persistent strong rise in metal prices accelerated the earnings growth of the A-share nonferrous metals industry in Q3 2025 and Q1 2026, while overall sector valuations remain at historically low levels. Although Middle East conflicts caused a pullback from highs, since mid-April, as market sentiment over Middle East geopolitical events gradually digested, US-Iran ceasefire talks progressed, and uncertainties around economic and liquidity expectations narrowed, market risk appetite has been continuously recovering. This is expected to support nonferrous metals prices returning to an upward trajectory, with sector performance having upside potential.
[The Nonferrous Metals Trend Has Arrived, A "Super Cycle" is Unstoppable] The Huabao Nonferrous Metals ETF (159876) and its feeder funds (Class A: 017140, Class C: 017141) track an index that comprehensively covers industries like copper, aluminum, gold, rare earths, and lithium, spanning different cycles such as precious metals (safe-haven), strategic metals (growth), and industrial metals (recovery). This full-category coverage allows for better capture of the sector's beta movements. Simultaneously, this ETF is a margin trading and securities lending target, serving as an efficient tool for a one-click allocation to the nonferrous metals sector. As of the end of April, the Huabao Nonferrous Metals ETF (159876) had a latest size of 1.865 billion yuan, making it the largest ETF among the three products tracking the same underlying index in the market.
Note: The Huabao Nonferrous Metals ETF (159876) was previously known as the Nonferrous Metals Leaders ETF in the market. Risk Disclosure: The Huabao Nonferrous Metals ETF passively tracks the CSI Nonferrous Metals Index. The base date for this index is December 31, 2013, and it was launched on July 13, 2015. The index constituents are adjusted according to its compilation rules, and its past back-tested performance does not indicate future index performance. The index constituents mentioned herein are for illustrative purposes only. Descriptions of individual stocks do not constitute investment advice in any form, nor do they represent the holdings information or trading动向 of any fund managed by the manager. The fund manager assesses this fund's risk等级 as R3-Medium Risk, suitable for Balanced (C3) and above investors. Please refer to the销售机构 for suitability matching opinions. Any information appearing in this article (including but not limited to stocks, commentary, forecasts, charts, indicators, theories, any form of表述, etc.) is for reference only. Investors are responsible for any independent investment decisions. Furthermore, any views, analysis, or forecasts herein do not constitute investment advice of any kind to readers, and no responsibility is accepted for any direct or indirect losses arising from the use of this content. Fund investment carries risks. A fund's past performance does not represent its future performance. The performance of other funds managed by the fund manager does not constitute a guarantee of this fund's performance. Invest in funds with caution.
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