aluminium at historically high?? NO, it is still depressed historically!! Copper finally caught up with the times by zooming to $3.50/lb. Aluminium hasnt gone up much lately. Alcoa will top RTZ with a new bid. Aluminium is still cheap to buy. Compared to $1.25 gasoline today... It is a no brainer to top Rio with a higher bid... China can only increase production so much before beginning to import again like it did with copper. Alcan has a lot of hydro power and Alcoa will pay anything to get Alcan to resume growth for the next millenium. We are only producing 30 million tons compared to over one billion of heavy rusty dumb steel worldwide annually. Aluminium will replace a lot, lot, lot, lot, lot of steel !!! Composites will do too but not by much. Aluminum will be the king of the metals!!! Cars will be made mostly of aluminum because of superior crashworthiness compared with steel. I was floored by Freeport acquistion of Phelps Dodge for $26 billion while Phelps only sells only less than $10 billion of copper annually. That was almost triple the revcenues. Alcan is doing 20 billion smoehting which mean it can go up to 60 billion or more. If Alcoa lost, we will have to pay close attention to Alcoa real valuation ,anyway. Alcoa will go to $80 and stay there forever...and resume climb as production will grow indefinitely in the future. Alcoa want to grow faster with Alcan acquistion, I dont care which way Alcoa will go.

Zinc just passed aluminium now at $1.75/lb. What a joke!!! Zinc was the cheap cheap metal that used to sell for 40 cents a lb. Because of booming steel , zinc is use d to galvanize steel to keep it from rusting too fast. You see cyclone fences?? they are coated with zinc that make it look gray... That is zinc. Well alumninium will pass zinc again before too long. Aluminium is the laggard of the metals and will catch up to $3 /lb or more..

Have you looked at a chart of aluminum prices over the last five years?