Find below the iron ore price table for December 16, 2013:
Given yesterday’s Flash PMI this is a pretty solid performance in paper markets. Then again, they fell so far on Friday that some retracement seems fair. Spot is weak.
I’ve now got updated data from Bloomie on port stocks:
My experiment of grafting Mysteel data onto the chart has backfired with Bloomie data showing a small fall on the week. Sorry!
That leaves me feeling a little less bearish in the short term as the iron ore supply chain is not as full as I thought. The medium term outline remains the same. The Chinese infrastructure pipeline is emptying. The ore deluge is building. Offsetting these, the year end iron ore restock for the cyclone season and Q1 steel inventory rebuild is ongoing.
I still see late Q1 and after as the looming downside test for iron ore spot.
