Commodities

It’s awwn.

Here are the iron ore charts for June 2, 2015: Do not adjust your television set. Spot iron ore crashed yesterday. Benchmark Tianjin fell $3.10 to $55.80 and Qingdao spot fell $3.57, or 6.03%, to $55.63 a tonne. That’s a nice head and shoulders top in place with a busted neckline suggesting (on technicals) much more downside.

From The Times: Anglo American is planning to cut between 5 and 20 percent of staff at head offices around the world, sources close to the matter said, in an effort to keep shareholders on side and respond to a commodity price rout that has hit profits.

From the AFR: China has been rejecting Australian coal cargos that don’t pass new import quality restrictions, and the local industry is concerned that the testing is being misused to favour China’s struggling coal industry.

Here are the iron ore charts for July 1, 2015: Qingdao spot still falling and Tianjin benchmark was down 0.7% to $58.90.

Is the great iron ore miner bust finally upon us?

From the AFR: The US government bank that has injected almost $10 billion into Australian resources projects, including Gina Rinehart’s Roy Hill iron ore mine, is shutting down, leaving a potential funding hole for future mining development.

From the SMH: Australia’s largest new coal project, one hailed by Prime Minister Tony Abbott as a poverty-busting “miracle”, is unbankable in the assessment of Queensland’s Treasury, which also has question marks over the development’s transparency.

Here are the iron ore charts for June 30, 2015: Qingdao spot sank as expected and the technicals on its chart look unhappy.

Brent oil recovered some ground last night settling at $63.20 as I write.

The ongoing Shanghai stock crash is broadening out to some commodity markets with rebar futures in China limit down this morning and Dalian iron ore futures weakening sharply down 7 points to 417, on top of 10 points overnight making it effectively limit down versus yesterday, as I write.

From Son of BREE today: The combination of overcapacity, slowing consumption growth and a stronger US dollar have led most mineral and energy commodity prices to decline in the past year.

From the Motley Fool: Strategy Rio Tinto’s strategy of increasing production at a time when prices are depressed is a sound move.

Here are the iron ore charts for June 29, 2015: Qingdao spot continued to weaken and its chart is forming a pretty decent head and shoulders top pattern.

Brent oil broke down overnight as global turmoil hit risk.

From Origin today: I’ve said if before and I will say it again: LNG spot markets used to trade higher than contract volumes and the arbitrage was minimal.

Poor bastard.

Big iron ore is copping it again today, along with the broader market.

From Bloomie comes Caroline Bain at Capital Economics: “There will be a sharp move down in the second half, when people realise that the apparent shortage that they’ve seen in the second quarter was temporary,” Bain said on Friday.

Here are the iron ore charts for June 26, 2015: Spot was weakish with Qingdao down and Tianjin benchmark down more, some 60 cents to $60.70.

Brent oil settled a little lower Friday night at $63.18.