Iron ore air pocket turns bottomless pit

Sunday 23 April 2023

Uh oh. Things are moving fast for iron ore and in the wrong direction. Rebar futures (black) are leading the way lower and iron ore (blue) plus coking coal (orange) following:

The problem is, the Chinese recovery is leaving construction behind. The promising property sales rebound has petered out:

Worse, the transmission to starts is broken as developer funding is very limited. The dollar-bond bubble of the last few cycles is gone:

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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.