It's China...nobody really knows what is going on.

This confident statement from some bank or other,

The flow will be at its highest this month with some 110,000 tonnes of metal leaving bonded storage, easing to 90,000 in July and 90,000 tonnes over August and September.

And yet,

So far, there is no sign of the metal's showing up. LME stocks have fallen by 2,000 tonnes since Reuters first reported on the Qingdao crackdown on June 2.

Nervous traders are watching the daily data closely.

They don't know what they are talking about.

Fundamentally, nothing's changed if you look at the stock numbers," said a London-based LME futures trader.