Friday, April 3, 2015

Steel and Iron Ore prices continue down...


Steel roundup from MEPS here.

U.S. situation:
Flat product prices have continued to plummet in the US. While underlying consumption is generally good, overblown inventories and perceptions of lower prices in the future are masking true demand. 
Imports from all over the world have rapidly gained market share, encouraged by the strong US dollar and slow economies in Europe and Asia. Domestic capacity utilisation rates have dropped sharply, to below 70 percent. As orders on local mills have slowed, producers have continued to offer discounts to try to generate new business.
Chinese will be dumping:
Chinese market sentiment remained weak following the lunar new year holidays. The anticipated demand improvement failed to materialise and prices have continued their negative trend. Further pressure has been put on selling values by the ever-declining cost of iron ore. Overcapacity remains a serious problem, producing a supply glut in an economy that is not growing at the speed seen in the past.

Iron ore prices had a very weak March and into early April:




This is continued favorable for USD imo.

3 comments:

mike norman said...

You have Bloomberg?

Matt Franko said...

Whatever they tweet for free Mike... ;)

No... I wish I had it but I assume it is VERY expensive for an individual...

I follow several of their various twitter feeds and just pick up stuff from that as they tweet it out...

I'd really like to know what they offer as far as OTC prices of export products like this from Iron Ore and steel here, etc...

Mike this may portend another leg up for the USD if the exporters lower their prices another leg down...

Though I would feel more confident if we would soon see oil below $40 to go with this continued metal collapse....

rsp,

Tom Hickey said...

Global economy on the down escalator, holding hands with deflation.