Some nice charts here from Macquarie show the bulk commodity rally getting toppy:
China’s customs bureau released preliminary April trade data over the weekend. While major bulk commodities saw roughly flat MoM imports, exports of steel and coke dropped from March levels. Copper imports retreated as expected and aluminium export volumes contracted.
Iron ore imports came in at 83.9mt, up 1% on an annualised basis from 85.8mt in March. As domestic steel output continued to ramp up in April, with the CISA mills reporting annualised production of 620mtpa in April compared with 594mtpa in March, the lack of import growth seems to suggest domestic iron ore has stepped in to fill the gap. Indeed, the capacity utilisation rate among domestic miners came up from 60.6% at the beginning of April to 63.7% at the end of April according to a MySteel survey.
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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.
