Daily iron ore price update (raising the dead)

Here are the iron ore charts for November 20, 2014:

It’s been a long time between flying anvils but we have one today, finally. Paper markets are still awful with Dalian pricing in the range of $61 by May. Despite its turn, the 12 month swap spread to spot is still very wide and in the past a move to contango has been a very reliable guide to turns in the physical market. Rebar average is now catching down after its APEC head fake but, as you can see in the last chart, the spread from it to iron ore spot is now at its most narrow since the GFC and as a rough guide to steel mill profitability it shows much progress for the Chinese, provided they are using imported iron ore. That should mitigate against destocking.

Reuters has texture:

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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.