Daily iron ore price update (all but over)

Monday, 15 July 2019

Spot prices eased. Paper was stable. Steel isn’t going anywhere. Reuters sums it up:

Utilization rates at steel mills across China fell to 66.02% as of Friday, the lowest since late March, data compiled by consultants Mysteel showed.

That is way down on the Q1 rates. With steel inventories still at reasonable levels it appears demand in China has peaked. Chinese credit data Friday night was only OK as well so I expect H2 will be at best stable. To the charts:

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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.