Iron ore wakes in fright

Wednesday 15 October 2025

For the life of me, I don’t know why anybody wants to be long iron ore here but hey, that’s how markets work sometimes.

Steel prices continue to fall, though long products are falling faster than flat products, which is key to some market resilience, as it helps hold up blast furnace output over electric-arc output.

Even so, the last time HRC was at this price, iron ore was 14% lower, steel exports were booming, Simandou was six months away, and everybody was short.

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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.