Iron ore prices for January 10, 2018: Nothing burger action again. Port Hedland December shipments rebounded strongly as BHP got its trains running again. But Q4 shipments were down 3% year on year which won’t help Q4 GDP.
Iron ore prices for January 9, 2019: All soft. Bloomie carries some warnings: “The $75 a ton iron ore price is not sustainable for two reasons,” the Goldman analysts said. “First, part of the rally was fueled by mills restocking ahead of the Chinese New Year. Second, supply is set to increase in 2019.” Morgan
Iron ore prices for January 8, 2019: Everything flat. Clyde Russell is bullish now: Commodity markets appear to have delivered their verdict on China’s plans to stimulate its economy, betting that Beijing’s boost to infrastructure spending will work. China’s central bank cut the amount of cash that banks have to hold as reserves for a
Iron ore prices for January 7, 2018: Everything up again, as expected. This is the strongest seasonal period of the year. Rebar inventories have made the turn and Chinese iron ore port stocks are up again too. How far will the restock run is the question? Vertical Group is bearish: Expectations of Seasonal Restock Help
Iron ore prices for January 4, 2019: Everything was up Friday. This is typical seasonal restocking activity. Expect it to run for most of January. Beyond that I am bearish. China has not delivered enough stimulus yet. The steel PMI in December remains quite weak as does the steel price. CISA output for mid-December slumped.
QLD Labor is running interference for Bill Shorten: Indian energy giant Adani will miss its Christmas deadline to begin construction of its controversial $2 billion Carmichael mine after the Palaszczuk Labor government commissioned an independent review into the company’s environmental management plans – a process which is expected to take at least two months. Although Adani Mining
Iron ore prices for December 21, 2018: Spot firmed. Paper fell. Steel bounced on some supply side shutdowns. Coking coal is still bulletproof. In news, Minas Rio is back: Anglo American (AAL.L) said on Friday it was restarting operations at its Minas-Rio iron ore mine in Brazil after months of closure, and had received regulatory
Son of BREE is out with its December quarter commodities outlook and it has not done a bad job with a boom and bust outlook: The individual outlooks are below: Iron and coking coal look good to me. I expect thermal coal to correct faster. The one outstanding price that is a little optimistic is
Iron ore prices for December 20, 2018: Spot up. Paper up. Steel up a little. Classic new year restocking now. It will run through to the end of January. There are still signs of stress under the bonnet, via Argus: Australian iron ore producer Fortescue Metals has narrowed discounts on its major products, as demand
Via the hedge fund Horseman Global: Your fund lost 1.32%. Losses on the long book where not compensated by gains in the short book and currency book. I started working for UBS Private Banking in Sydney on Valentine’s Day 2000. I still remember going to my first morning meeting and being introduced to the model
Iron ore price charts for December 19, 2018: Nothing burger. Look to February for next big move.
Via Platts: Samarco may restart iron ore pellet production activities as early as late 2019, and operate toward an 8 million mt/year rate during 2020, to meet high global pellet demand, the company said. Samarco will continue to use wet processing via floatation of iron ore, and aims to produce the same pellet grades as
Iron ore prices for December 17, 2018: Spot up. Paper down. Steel stalled. Port stocks still falling. It’s normal seasonal strength. Look to February for the next break in prices.
Iron ore prices for December 14, 2018: Spot up. Paper up. Steel up. There’s nothing the iron ore Costanza market likes more than crashing Chinese demand data. That’s how conditioned it is to stimulus these days. My outlook is unchanged. Strength through new year and January then weakness as demand falls away. I don’t think
The world’s second largest economy has a problem. A big problem. Everything is slowing fast except the very thing that is wants to stop: building empty apartments! November data was bad. Industrial production slowed sharply to 5.4% and retail sales did as well to 8.1%. Fixed asset investment held up at 5.9%: Fixed asset investment
Iron ore prices for December 13, 2018: Everything up on seasonal strength. No surprises here. Prices should stay strong until February.
Iron ore prices for December 12, 2018 Spot stable. Paper too. Steel rebounded. Nothing burger. Westpac has some good material on next year: Three factors were behind the recovery in iron ore prices in 2018: 1) the restructuring of the Chinese steel industry and resulting lift in steel prices; 2) declining Chinese ore production due
Via The Australian: Manufacturers and heavy industry may be forced to shift operations overseas or shut down as energy prices soar three times higher than in the US, sparking fears of a fresh crisis for big users, analysis backed by Dow Chemical has warned. Queensland, the home of three LNG export plants, pays more for
Iron ore price charts for December 11, 2018: Spot is treading water. Paper jumped convulsively when it learned that Chinese credit is crashing. Coking coal contracts rolled forward. Steel is weak and getting weaker. Iron ore these days rises long before any actual stimulus meaning that strength is greeted with price rises and weakness with
Iron ore price charts for December 10, 2018: Spot down. Paper stable. Steel is breaking down. Mills margins will stay under pressure and it will hit bulks once past the new year restock.
Oddly enough it’s coal, from Clyde Russell: It’s not shaping up as a merry Christmas for coal exporters to Asia as the region’s top buyers, China and India, pull back from the recent trend of strong imports. The Chinese authorities appear to be making good on a commitment to try and limit the country’s imports
Iron ore prices for December 7, 2018: Spot up. Paper up. Steel up. Coking coal is very strong but I don’t think that can last. Chinese iron ore port stocks continue to draw down, hitting 138.6mt last week. Chinese imports of iron ore for November were at 86.2mt and the year is tracking below 2018
Via Argues: Brazil’s Samarco mine is likely to restart in early 2020, bringing a major source of high-grade iron ore back into the market, mining company Vale’s chief executive Fabio Schvartsman said today. “The worst part seems to be behind us,” Schvartsman said of the process to bring Samarco back on line after a fatal
Iron ore price charts for December 6, 2018: Spot down. Paper down more. Steel too. Planet coking coal drifting into its own orbit. I don’t expect much to happen between now and February. Look for flopping around in the $60-70 trading range.
EIA put out a timely reminder of the big picture for US oil. There has never been more proved reserves or production: A big part of this is the economics of shale oil. A typical oil well has economics that looks something like this: Source: Changing Paradigm for the Oil Industry: From Peak Oil Production
Iron ore prices for December 5, 2018: Everything pretty flat except steep production which remains off its face. While that remains the case prices will be under pressure. Though I see that as more a price cap than falls until February.
It is captured in this one chart from Art Berman: This one chart is the US shale revolution in global oil markets. What it shows is the forward curve for oil sales over time. As you can see, the curve has been smashed lower and flatter in recent weeks. What US shale does is find
Spot up. Paper up more. Steel futures shifted forward to May and slumped. Mill margins will be getting killed. Rebar inventories are still falling as nobody want to hold stock when prices are falling on over-production. There’s more pressure coming for iron ore once through the new year restock.
Via Capital Economics: The sharp fall in oil prices over the past month or so has led to several questions about the implications for the global economy. We’ve written lots on this subject, including how central banks might respond and why the major oil producers are now better positioned to weather a fall in prices than they were a
Iron ore prices for December 3, 2018: Spot up. Paper up. Steel up. But all well off their highs. Nothing too exciting here. I don’t expect prices to do too much over the next few months. Look to February for the next big move.
