Daily iron ore price update (the top)

David Llewellyn-Smith

Monday, 5 March 2018

Iron ore prices for March 2, 2018:

Tianjin benchmark got whacked -2.4% to $77.65. Paper fell further overnight. Steel fell.

Two more charts to complete the picture. CISA steel mill output for early February lifted 1.6% to 1.78mt and is running at levels solidly above last year. But the huge spreads we saw between mid-2017 and 2016 have diminished. Those spreads were the result of the big shutdown of illegal steel production which shifted some sizable portion of 60mt of capacity back onto the blast furnaces accounts. Therefore, if the spreads are smaller now then so, probably, is demand:

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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.