Nickel surged 15 per cent on the London Metal Exchange (LME) yesterday, reaching its upper trading limit. Benchmark nickel gained 5.5 per cent at the open and hovered at stronger levels for the first few hours of trade, but spiked by nearly $3,000 in the span of about 20 minutes. A trader said it was unclear what was behind the sudden jump, but that it might be due to computer-driven automated trading systems. The market was finally rebooted successfully earlier this week after multiple false starts this and six days of suspending trading. This followed nickel prices rallying earlier this month to over $100,000 per tonne after a failed shorting attempt against the metal from a Chinese billionaire.

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