Nickel Prices Continue to Drop, time to lock in?

With all the talk of skyrocketing raw materials prices, I thought it was worth taking a look at nickel prices. Nickel, you may recall, is by far the biggest cost of making robots because of the large amounts of nickel used in iRobot's large battery packs.
Here's a 3-Year Nickel chart:

Here's the 6-Month chart:

Note last year's spike in nickel prices? That cost iRobot a mean $5 million and helped spoil any upside surprise management had been hoping for (along with the millions spent fighting Jameel Ahed's Robotic FX contract).
Now prices have dropped to the lowest levels in about two years, and could be set to slide even more as inventories of nickel appear to be in a position of massive oversupply:

Then again, soaring demand for hybrid cars and trucks could cause demand to spike...
The company locked in this year's full-year nickel expense to prevent any more surprises, but hopefully they are looking at the market and will figure out an opportune time to lock in next year's nickel as well. They could save a buck or two, or a million.

Tags: iRobot, nickel