Market Verdict on Iron Ore：
• Neutral.

 

Macro
• German February PPI increased by 25.9% y-o-y, created the fastest growth from the year 1949, due to the massive increase on energy prices.

 

Iron Ore Key Indicators:

• Platts62 $150.80 (+4.45), MTD 149.86. Iron ore portside and seaborne both saw much higher offers on last Friday as trade sources indicated that mills are confident on the pandemic recovery in Tangshan, although Shanghai was still in a quiet mode with limited industry activities because the daily new added patients are refreshing higher numbers. Tangshan mills started to asking for raw material bids and preparing to increase the mills inventories step by step. Otherwise they will have to suspend the operation on blast furnace. MACF is the most popular mid-grade since the cost-effective to mills. Heavy discount fines and low grade are still major trades on seaborne market as well as portside market. MACF discount was narrowed fast at $9.9 on May laycans, and 3-4 laycans of fixed price trades during the past two weeks.
• The Guinean government has signed an agreement with two groups of iron ore Simandou project, and the operation of the project may resume. After the project was suspended for two weeks, the Guinean government, Win Alliance (WCS) and Rio Tinto simfer signed a 35 year infrastructure agreement. Earlier, the Guinean government suspended the project after saying that the two development groups failed to make progress in the financing negotiations for the local port and railway.
SGX Iron Ore 62% Futures& Options Open Interest (Mar 25th)
• Futures 91,053,900 tonnes(Decrease 532,600 tonnes)
• Options 91,848,800 tonnes(Increase2,762,500tonnes)

 

Steel Key Indicators
• Baosteel indicated that the company would purchase iron ore settling in RMB in the year 2022 by 10%. The RMB settled iron ore purchase account for 6% in the year 2021.

 

Coal Indicators
• Australia premium low coking coal FOB price started to slump contributed by lacking of liquidity on physical market. Thus, traders need to hedge on paper market to prevent the vacuum on potential losses on the near contract. Previously coking coal Mar-Jun ever reached $200 – 210. But China pandemic and India import on Russia coals both hurt the Australia export market. China Shanxi decreased 200 yuan/ton because the coal transportation from western China to northern steel mills are disrupted.
• India is likely to continue to increase importing coking coal from Russia and is considering it, Union Steel Minister Ramchandra Prasad Singh said on Sunday.