Market Verdict on Iron Ore：
· Iron ore short-run neutral.
Macro
· China National Bureau of Statistics: Excavators production in July 18,357 sets, down 18.4% y-o-y. Jan-Jul total produced 232,633 sets, up 22.7% y-o-y. The year on year growth rate has decrease for consecutive four months.
· 500 concrete companies in China indicated last week concrete shipments decrease significantly. Concrete utilization rate 17.32%, down 0.54% w-o-w, down 6.7% y-o-y, much lower than expectation.
Iron Ore Key Indicators:
· Platts62 $130.20, -22.85, MTD $165.22.
· Tangshan 126 sample blast furnaces total maintenance impact 994,700 of pig iron production last week.
· MySteel 45 ports iron ore inventories at 127.96 million tonnes, up 1.675 million tonnes w-o-w. Daily evacuation 2.95 million tonnes, down 41,000 tonnes w-o-w. Australia iron ore 64.15 million tonnes, up 29,000 tonnes w-o-w. Brazil iron ore 36.58 million tonnes, up 1.67 million tonnes w-o-w. 185 ships at ports, down 14.
·
SGX Iron Ore 62% Futures& Options Open Interest (Aug 19th)
· Futures 82,329,800 tonnes(Increase 719,600 tonnes)
· Options 79,465,300 tonnes(Increase 6,769,500 tonnes)
Steel Key Indicators
· China National Bureau of Statistics: China Jan- Jul rebar production 157.45 million tones, up 7.2% y-o-y.
· CISA appealed steel mills to initiatively decrease export to ensure the domestic supply and decrease energy consumption.
Coal Indicators
· China Shandong started the fifth round of price increase by 120 yuan/tonne on physical coke executed by August 20th.