The aluminum market's lifeblood is manufacturing and packaging - and times are looking better in these early days of 2011. The metal is now trading at $2,505 per metric ton and continues to bounce around the $2,550 level, MF Global writes in a LME Daily Metals Report this week. While there's a strong floor at $2,430, upside resistance kicks in around $2,541, it said.

First things first: North American Palladium has moved 51% higher over the past thee months. This is just one example of how palladium and platinum miners are substantially outperforming the broader market as sentiment has gone from bullish to “just buy the thing.”

The global tin market is generally driven by producers in Indonesia, China and Peru. The production of the silverly, malleable metal – used for things like steel-plating – has been in decline in these markets, in part because poor weather has challenged operating conditions and undermined transport.

Zinc and cobalt often fall into that esoteric metals category called byproduct, meaning they are generally an afterthought for miners who are keen at getting at, say, nickel or copper deposits. Still, both metals are being increasingly targeted for their use in growing markets, such as rechargeable batteries for electric cars.

The iron ore market will never be as a sexy as its gold and silver counterparts; it’s much more about hard hats and dirty Dodge RAM 3500 trucks – you know, the ones that can pull big fishing boats up mountainsides, something I did just this past weekend.

The steel-gray metal – one known for its high melting point, which makes it ideal for use as a filament, superalloy or in military applications – is making a resurgence as market machinations in China restrict exports and western miners scramble to meet demand.

The number of blogs, tweets, newspaper columns, RSS feeds, Facebook chats and business channel roundtables about where the value of gold, silver, the greenback and euro are headed could be compared to the U.S. government’s burgeoning debt burden.

Old mines and open pits – often abandoned and left derelict by former owners – can be found in any region of the world that […]

The number of blogs, tweets, newspaper columns, RSS feeds, Facebook chats and business channel roundtables about where the value of gold, silver, the greenback and euro are headed could be compared to the U.S. government’s burgeoning debt burden.