Focus on some aspects of market price trends for tungsten

Abstract

The contribution deals with prices of tungsten concentrate and ammonium paratungstate (APT) where the latter represents the most common form of tungsten for trading purposes. Taking examples of US and China tungsten markets, this paper demonstrates that the tungsten market price is influenced by many other factors than only those of supply and demand. As based on the past pricing trends for tungsten ore concentrates and also ammonium paratungstate (APT), a two year's tungsten price forecast has been developed. The data published by the Metal Bulletin between January 2002 and June 2015 served the purpose of our future trend forecasting. The forecast took advantage of the programme, @RISK by Palisade Corporation, Ithaca, New York (Industrial Edition, Excel Version 6.3.1). The forecast outcomes acquired by GARCH (Generalized Auto-Regressive Conditional Heteroskedastic Model) implied a modification of the original time series of the APT prices, i.e. exclusion of relatively stable prices of the initial period, and the immediate phase of their temporary growth. In the next step, the forecast for APT prices was obtained by means of applying the model MA (Moving Average Model). The outcome corroborates the theory of the growth and drop pricing cycles, which mechanism also applies to tungsten ore concentrate markets.