Daily iron ore price update (weak) (members)

Wednesday, 20 August 2014

Here are the iron ore charts for August 19, 2014:

Still a very weak market. 12 month swaps held on but Dalian is sinking to new lows daily. Same goes for rebar futures. In physical markets, rebar average continues to fade away as well, though iron ore spot is holding up. The BDI cape rally stalled.

Were we at any other point in the cycle I would be crying “lower prices ahead” but Q4 is a reliable restock and even though underlying demand is weakening it should go ahead. Housing will have to enter virtual crisis to prevent it, which is not at all impossible but the not the base case (for this year!).

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About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.