Sell side piles into iron ore bust

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Forexlive has nice take on the recent sell side capitulation over iron ore:

  • From the Wall Street Journal last night saying investors are cutting their exposure to iron ore “as the industry faces a flood of new supply that has pushed prices … close to two-year lows.”
  • With all the new supply coming on line concerns are that sharp bounce-backs in prices seen in the past after selloffs will no longer occur (I guess it really is different this time, then?)
  • “In previous years we have seen a sharp selloff followed by a sharp rebound,” said Neil Gregson, a fund manager at J.P. Morgan Asset Management overseeing about US$3.5 billion in natural-resources investments. “This time we don’t think there will be that sharp rebound.”
  • Gregson expects iron-ore prices to move in a US$10-band either side of current levels
  • Deutsche Bank and Commonwealth Bank of Australia have slashed their forecasts for iron-ore prices
  • Morgan Stanley has lowered its price estimates by 21% in each of the next two years, to US$90 a ton in 2015 and US$87 a ton in 2016, saying it had underestimated the speed at which new mines were starting up
  • UBS predicts the seaborne market will be awash with almost 74 million tons of surplus iron ore this year. By 2016, the seaborne market could be oversupplied by 267 million tons—or as much as Rio Tinto, the world’s No. 2 iron-ore exporter, produced last year

Too little, too late but hey. All the miners are flying again today, especially the walking dead.

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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.
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