Market Verdict on Iron Ore：
• Neutral.
Macro
• Russia potentially stop providing natural gas after Europe rejected to settled the deal with rubles. Thus Germany potentially activate contingency plan to control gas usage in the next few months. U.S. crude oil inventories decrease as a tight supply as well as traders were worrying the sanctions would restriction oil supply from Russia in long-run.
• China March PMI 49.5, est. 49.8, last 50.2.
Iron Ore Key Indicators:
• Platts62 $152.40, +1.60, MTD $149.99. 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.
• MySteel reached 16 steel mills, 50% of mills indicated would maintain current iron ore inventories. 30% of mills indicated that they would decrease iron ore inventories. The major restock brands for mills area PBF, NMHG, MACF, JMBF and SSF.
SGX Iron Ore 62% Futures& Options Open Interest (Mar 30th)
• Futures 91,987,700 tonnes(Increase 1,582,000 tonnes)
• Options 91,703,800 tonnes(Decrease 1,020,000 tonnes)
Steel Key Indicators
• The biggest Ukraine miner Metinvest CEO indicated that the metallurgical capacity lost 30-40% in Mariupol, which account for more than 1/3 of Ukraine steel capacity.
• China Baosteel required the production to reach normal utilisation rate during pandemic.
Coal Indicators
• 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.