Research

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

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May 2018 | Steel Raw Materials


Buying caution may be more temporary than thought: Iron Ore Market Analysis


It is clear that rising steel consumption in China, which rose more than 9% year on year in the first quarter and appeared to remain strong last month has supported iron and steel production and in-turn the demand and prices of iron ore.

As expected, the destocking strategy we alluded to a week ago did negatively impact the iron ore benchmark (MBIOI-62), if only very modestly. In the week ending May 4, the average slipped $0.25 to $66.39 per tonne. Moreover, so far this week, prices have recovered and reinforces our belief that even if supply-demand fundamentals remain generally slack in China amid a stock overhang (see chart), iron ore prices, particularly for these medium and higher quality benchmarks, are surprisingly well supported.

It...

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