Our latest proprietary survey shows sentiment continued to improve in the Chinese steel market through mid-March, especially among steel traders. The level of orders from end users saw dramatic sequential improvement in February–March, and mill profitability also continued to improve.
Orders and sales: The change in domestic orders at mills reached the highest level in the history of our survey in mid-March (Fig 2), which seems to suggest the underlying demand is quickly catching up with the previous expectations of a coming pick-up in orders. The strength of the domestic market also means mills are less focused on exports, as illustrated by a dip of export orders in our survey (Fig 3).
The full text of this article is available to MacroBusiness subscribers
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.
