Daily iron ore price update (all over bar the shouting)

Tuesday, 8 June 2021

The ferrous complex was universally weak on June 7, 2021. Spot fell. Paper tumbled. Steel was whacked. That this all happened on the day that Brazil plugged another dodgy dam is not a sign of market strength.

The proximate cause was mediocre Chinese trade data. Iron ore imports for May were lousy at 89.79mt and the rolling annual has peaked:

Supply-side friction may have contributed. But given how high steel output has been, one might have expected Chinese iron ore stockpiles to have shrunk over the period but they have been roughly stable even amid soft imports.

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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.