Iron ore price

The iron ore charts for March 31, 2014 are below: Rebar futures were up a decent slice too.

From the AFR: An industrial dispute involving tugboat workers at Port Hedland is threatening to halt shipping of iron ore through the port, and disrupt Australia’s most lucrative export chain.

From the AFR today, Gina Rinhart’s son, John Hancock, argues: “Export credit agency funding ­certainly is not welfare – my mother is paying interest and buying hundreds of millions of dollars of American equipment – and is undoubtedly a significant benefit to the US, or why would they do the deal?

Here are the iron ore charts for March 28,2014: Friday rumours of Chinese stimulus boosted paper markets with rebar futures up a decent slab as well.

It appears the sickening markets we’ve seen for iron and copper in recent weeks are now spreading to soft commodities as Chinese demand falls.

Yesterday we heard about the closing of the Ravensthorpe soft-coking coal mine in Newcastle and, it has to be said, it won’t be the last.

UBS has terrific note today on Gina Rinehart’s Roy Hill, including some estimates on what we’ve all been waiting for, break even cost: The Roy Hill mine is planned to ship through Port Hedland alongside major producers BHP Billiton and FMG.

The AFR has a hopeful story for iron ore majors today: The state-owned CITIC Group has agreed to inject a suite of assets into its Hong Kong-listed subsidiary, CITIC Pacific, marking the second bailout by Beijing in just five years.

Here are the iron ore charts for March 27, 2014: So, a slightly firmer day yesterday in both paper and physical markets although both have contradictory signals with rebar futures falling and the Baltic Dry capesize component tumbling another 7%.

I’m really enjoying the effort of FMG’s Nev Power at the moment.

Mac Bank has its proprietorial China steel mill survey out and the news is poor.

Here are the iron ore charts for March 26, 2014: Yesterday’s paper market squeeze managed a little follow through in Dalian futures but rebar futures fell a little.

Not much follow through today in China’s iron ore paper market squeeze.

Australia’s preternaturally bullish commodity forecaster is back with its quarterly rice review and, guess what, it’s dramatically cut prices for this year and next. In December it said: For 2013 as a whole, spot prices are expected to average around US$126 a tonne (see Figure 1).

Its  a brave from FMG’s Nev Power today.

Here are the iron ore charts for March 25, 2014: Stimulus party!

Yesterday I served a ladle of gruel over Roy Hill but today I’m going to defend Gina Rinehart from a bitchy MSM onslaught. From John Kehoe: How Australia’s richest person, mining heiress Gina Rinehart, secured a $US694 million ($764 million) loan from American taxpayers is surely one of the great ironies of the capitalist system.

Apologies for being a little late with my daily post today.

Here are the iron ore charts for March 21, 2014:   Well!

Here are the iron ore charts for March 20,2014: Nothing much going on here.

From the World Steel Association: World crude steel production for the 65 countries reporting to the World Steel Association (worldsteel) was 125 million tonnes (Mt) in February 2014, an increase of 0.6% compared to February 2013.

From Platts: An industry group representing Chinese iron ore miners aims to satisfy 50% of the country’s annual iron ore consumption with domestic supply by 2025, up from the current 30%, via consolidation and expansion of mining companies, a senior official with the Metallurgical Mines’ Association of China said this week.