LME Nickel Stocks down 1,104 MT to 275,340 MT

• Markets: Forget about June gloom: All three major indexes kicked off the month with new records yesterday, thanks in part to frequent market main character Nvidia spiking after revealing that it’s getting into the PC game, with what it calls the “most efficient PC chip ever built,” setting it up to compete with the likes of Intel, AMD, Apple, and Qualcomm.

Curfew instituted around Newark ICE center amid protests

By Elizabeth Black

Newark, N.J., Mayor Ras Baraka on Sunday announced a curfew closing the area around the Delaney Hall Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center nightly until further notice amid escalating interactions between law enforcement and protesters at the site. The curfew would shut down a half-mile radius around the facility from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. and would also apply to vehicular traffic, with exceptions for verified official business, he said.

Police arrested several people carrying weapons at the site before Baraka’s curfew order, he said. The Department of Homeland Security postedseveral videos showing protesters being arrested by officers in riot gear. It also shared videos of people shoving officers, throwing objects, and pushing through temporary barricades, while the officers enforced a perimeter with what appeared to be tear gas and flashbangs.

Mayor Baraka blamed ICE agents for escalating the situation. While he urged protesters to remain peaceful, he said the protests had gone on for over a year and were necessary to bring attention to inhumane conditions at the facility. Homeland Security refused to allow state health officials to inspect Delaney Hall, he said.

But what does Homeland Security have to say? The Homeland Security department said allegations of hunger strikes and bad conditions at the facility were false. All detainees had three meals a day, personal necessities, healthcare, and opportunities to communicate with family and lawyers, the department said in a social media post.

Trump says Israel and Hezbollah agreed to ease fighting after Iran stops peace talks. Iran ceased negotiating a deal with the US yesterday, calling out Israel’s fighting with Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, and said it would move to fully block the Strait of Hormuz, according to local media. President Trump told CNBC “I don’t care if” peace talks are over but said he would ask Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about Lebanon. After speaking with Netanyahu, Trump said Hezbollah had “agreed that all shooting will stop—that Israel will not attack them, and they will not attack Israel.” Lebanon later confirmed the new ceasefire, as did Netanyahu, though he said Israeli strikes would continue “if Hezbollah does not stop attacking our cities and civilians.”

Serena Williams to make pro tennis comeback after almost four years. The 44-year-old tennis legend has accepted a wild-card invitation to play doubles in next week's HSBC Championships at The Queen's Club in London. The 23-time Grand Slam singles champ hasn’t played in a professional match since saying she was “evolving away” from the sport after the 2022 US Open. But her decision to return on a grass court has fueled speculation that she may also compete at Wimbledon (a rumor that Wimbledon's welcome back post is unlikely to squelch).

Nickel prices climbed following a report of further output cuts in Indonesia, and as the top producer of the metal took steps to control its commodities exports.  Futures rallied sharply on the London Metal Exchange during Asian trading hours after Shanghai Metals Market reported that 10% to 15% of high-grade nickel pig iron capacity at Indonesia Weda Bay Industrial Park will be placed under rotational maintenance in the coming months.  

Nickel got a further lift as Bloomberg reported that Indonesia plans to tighten control over commodity exports including coal and palm oil, with prices rallying as much as 3.2% to $19,165 a ton before paring gains. Speculation that the government will centralize commodities exports to control capital flows and shore up a plunging currency has rattled the country’s natural resources markets.

Some Indonesian production of NPI — used to make stainless steel — has been curtailed since March and April due to a drop in ore supplies and high costs, SMM said, without citing anyone. The reallocation of power resources to new aluminum capacity has worsened the situation, the research firm said.

Indonesia has cut nickel ore mining quotas this year to help revive prices, causing a raw material shortage and forcing production cuts at local smelters. The country accounts for well over half of global output, thanks to a wave of Chinese investment. 

NPI smelters at the Weda Bay park produce about 40,000 tons a month of contained metal, according to Guotai Junan Futures Co. China’s Tsingshan Holding Group Co. is major operator there.

Nickel rose 1.3% to settle at $18,806 a ton on the LME, in a mixed session for industrial metals.

Answer to today's trivia question:They are all types of triangles

If you’re a recent college graduate blaming AI for stealing your job, you’re not necessarily wrong, but you may want to consider another factor for why your diploma feels worthless. A study by the New York Fed found that remote work is a bigger contributor to unemployment rates among young people than AI.

Before you say we’ve been infiltrated by robot overlords asking us to blame people working in their pajamas, here’s the case NY Fed economists made for why the jobless rates for college graduates under age 29 rose from 3.1% on average from 2017 to 2019 to an average of 3.7% from 2022 through 2025:

• Between 2017 to 2019 and 2022 to 2024, the unemployment rate for “remotable” jobs rose nearly 1% among the younger crowd. But, in the same time frame, the jobless rate declined among those 29 and older.
• Meanwhile, for non-remote jobs, there’s little difference between these age groups.

The unemployment rate for young college graduates was 5.6% in March 2026, up from 3.6% in March 2019. According to the NY Fed, the rise in remote work is responsible for 64% of that increase.

How is remote work preventing…work?

The NY Fed said it was given access to proprietary data from an anonymous Fortune 500 company and found a reluctance to hire younger, inexperienced workers for remote positions because it’s harder for them to develop skills in an isolated setting.

A Wharton management professor, who spoke to Fortune after a British academic study also pointed to remote work as the culprit for new grads’ hiring woes, believes that Gen Z’s development is being stunted because older millennials are not in the office to set an example for younger employees. He thinks remote work is diminishing the long-term value of new graduates, pushing employers toward older candidates who already gained experience in the pre-remote world.

As for AI…the NY Fed said it “may play a more primary role” in employment patterns in the future. A Goldman Sachs report published on Friday found that ~21,900 layoffs in April were explicitly attributed to AI, the highest monthly total since the bank began tracking in 2023.