Research

Forecasts and market analysis based on price assessments from Fastmarkets MB and Fastmarkets AMM

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March 2018 | Steel Raw Materials


REALITY BITES: Iron Ore Market Analysis


Issues we have are how can steel production be accelerating, up 5.9% year on year during the first two months, when production of iron, the major steelmaking raw material, is in retreat?

As expected, iron ore spot prices fell hard last week. We detailed last week that a major price supporting factor, earlier in the year, had been Chinese production, which surprised us by apparently collapsing more than 30% below year-ago levels before those same year-ago levels were heavily downwardly revised. Making sense of official Chinese data set at the start of the year is increasingly the realm of comedians rather than analysts but the fact that prices are falling does, finally, make some fundamental sense amid what is irrefutably an oversupplied market.

Issues we have are how can steel production be...

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