Daily iron ore price update (on track)

Tianjin benchmark fell 25 cents to $73.50. Paper was soft overnight. Steel is range trading. Rebar inventories in China climbed to nearly 4mt last week, a little down year on year.

We’ll next see the big restock of steel inventories. It appears on track so far, relatively unaffected by Winter shutdowns. If so then I expect steel and iron ore sell off right through Q2. Wood Mac is turning bearish:

Experts at UK-based research and consultancy group Wood Mackenzie say whether the current reverse becomes a rout or not, iron ore’s near future is not looking good. As a result, the consultancy has dropped its price forecast for seaborne to $63 a tonne or 12% below last year’s average of $71 per tonne.

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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.