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.
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Daily iron ore price update (normal)
Primary Section
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Daily iron ore price update (Costanza market)
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
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China is in trouble
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
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Daily iron ore price update (seasonal)
Iron ore prices for December 13, 2018: Everything up on seasonal strength. No surprises here. Prices should stay strong until February.
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Daily iron ore price update (forecasts)
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
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Inept manufactures call for more gas supply
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
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Daily iron ore price update (convulsive)
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
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Daily iron ore price update (steel break)
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.
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A new Aussie GDP threat emerges
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
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Daily iron ore price update (the end game)
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
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Samarco restart in 2020
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
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Daily iron ore price update (60-70)
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.
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Oil prices not low enough to slow US production
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
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Daily iron ore price update (output)
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.
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How US shale controls oil prices
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
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Daily iron ore price update (divergence)
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.
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The economic impact of falling oil
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
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Daily iron ore price update (meh)
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.
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Trade war/no trade war = iron ore up?
Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense does it? Over the past six months as China has slowed, iron ore has boomed. Every time the trade war intensified, it was bid up on hopes of more Chinese stimulus. Yet yesterday, as the trade war cooled off, iron ore boomed again. What is it, a magic pudding
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Commodity price index signals terms-of-trade boost
By Leith van Onselen The RBA has released its commodity price index for November, which increased 1.2% in SDR (currency weighted) terms – the key determinant of the terms-of-trade – but fell by 1.2% in Australian dollar terms: Preliminary estimates for November indicate that the index increased by 1.2 per cent (on a monthly average
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Daily iron ore price update (PMI trashed)
Iron ore prices for November 30, 2019: Spot down. Paper up. Steel struggling. Steel PMI trashed. Let’s look more closely at the latter: As a single industry PMI, the steel survey is much more volatile than any sector wide version. Nonetheless, it is a good guide to pivot points and trend changes. The key number
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Daily iron ore price update (soft)
Iron ore price for November 29, 2018: Spot down. Paper more. Steel too. Doesn’t feel very strong. But the new year restock looms and it can’t get far to the downside with that backstop.
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Daily iron ore price update (that’s all you got?)
Iron ore prices for November 28, 2018: Spot up. Paper down. Steel up. Coking coal is rock solid. Is that really all it’s got? There’s no forced liquidation there. Just a few mills bashing the price lower for a few days to repair margins. Paper is still weak so there may be more ahead but
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Daily iron ore price update (liquidation over?)
Iron ore prices for November 27, 2018: Spot stabilised. Paper is still soft. Steel rebounded. Whether it is already over is in the lap of the gods, via Reuters: China’s steel production hit a record 82.55 million tonnes in October, but steel prices and margins have since shrunk as China dialed back on winter output
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Daily iron ore price update (old school crash)
Iron ore prices for November 26, 2018: Spot is now in an old school crash. Paper too but it is following. Coking coal is still relatively strong. Steel is still very high. Port stocks even higher! When we see these types of shakeouts it is because somebody has been caught on the wrong side
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Daily iron ore price update (destocking rout)
Iron ore prices for November 23, 2018: Spot routed. Paper following. Steel smashed. Yet rebar inventories are still down. It does not make complete sense. It looks like steel mills are overproducing and the steel price is sinking as a result. They are responding by destocking raw materials. All normal for this time of year.
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Daily iron ore price update (ignoring Dalian)
Iron ore prices for November 22, 2018: Spot down hard despite soaring paper. For once the physical market dynamics might actually dictate price to the Dalian nutters. Steel is still weak. Looks like there’s further downside ahead as there should be.
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Labor to offer a battery for every household! Sort of
Via the ABC: Australian households will be offered federal rebates to install solar storage batteries under a federal Labor energy policy that will also direct billions of taxpayer dollars at solar, wind and hydro projects. Though Mr Shorten is likely to frame ALP adoption of the NEG as an attempt to find common ground with
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Daily iron ore price update (nonsense returns)
Iron ore prices for November 21, 2018: Spot flat. Paper roared. Steel fell again as CISA early November output remains very high. This is killing mills’ margins. It should see a destock of raw materials and falling prices but iron ore now trades as the perfect counter to any Cold War 2.0 news on hopes of
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Daily iron ore price update (sense at last)
Iron ore prices for November 20, 2018: Spot, paper and steel all smashed. There should be more to come. Via Vertical Group: Over the past week we’ve had the chance to speak, on the phone, with a number of steel traders in China (i.e., CRM + Tangsong + SY + Min Metals + Liaoning Dongya