Daily iron ore price update (bust)

Spot prices crashed. Paper too. Steel is weakening again. The culprit was easy to find, via Reuters:

Executives from eight steel firms representing 30% of China’s steel output, including China Baowu Group, HBIS Group, Jiangsu Shagang Group and Ansteel Group, gathered at the China Iron and Steel Association (CISA) on June 27 in Beijing, according a document with the minutes from the meeting that was reviewed by Reuters.

…The eight steel mills will create an investigation group, led by Baowu and assisted by the others, to look into the pricing methodology of imported iron ore, to coordinate with futures exchanges to stabilize the market, and to plead to government departments to “sustain market order”.

The full text of this article is available to MacroBusiness subscribers

$1 for your first month, then:

$24.99 / month

$249 / year

Cancel at any time through our billing provider, Stripe

Share

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.