Daily iron ore price update (despair)

Thursday, 17 August 2017

Iron ore price charts for August 16, 2017:

Tianjin spot fell 60 cents to $71.70. Paper went berserk overnight. Steel was sinking but I know not what it will do today. The two coals have ceased to make sense to me.

Today I’m wondering if I should close this column. I pride myself on having a good handle on market fundamentals but it just doesn’t matter any more. Coal and iron ore markets are flooded with supply. Demand is clearly going to soften. Inventories are spread between sufficient and staggering.

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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.