From The Australian:
CLSA lowers its commodity price forecasts and trims its earnings estimates for a number of Australian miners, with Rio Tinto (RIO) marked down Underperform from Outperform and Alumina (AWC) lowered to Sell vs Underperform.
Downgrades follow continued US dollar strength, falling production costs, and weaker Chinese demand, although the broker has also lowered its Australian dollar assumption to $US0.75 cents from $US0.80 cents, offsetting the negative impact on earnings.
Iron ore forecasts have been lowered 6.8%-7.7% to $US58-$US60 a tonne for 2015-17.
Coking coal falls 7.2%-12.7% to $US114-$US130 a tonne.
Copper falls 8.1%-8.6% to $US2.83-$US3.40 a pound.
Gold falls as much as 3.8% to $US1229-$US1300 an ounce.
Alumina falls 3.2%-5.0% to $US0.85-$US0.95 a pound.
Not enough. Iron ore is going to average $40 next year. Coking coal is going well under $100 as Chinese steel output falls.
