China's ferrous futures fall further on frail sentiment
The futures prices of core ferrous commodities in China including those of steel and iron ore fell further on August 18 as market sentiment weakened some more. China&rsqu...
The futures prices of core ferrous commodities in China including those of steel and iron ore fell further on August 18 as market sentiment weakened some more.
China's most-traded rebar contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) for January 2022 delivery, for example, declined by another Yuan 198/tonne or 3.7% on from Tuesday's settlement price to close the daytime session at Yuan 5,144/t on Wednesday.
On the same day, the most-traded iron ore futures contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE) for January 2022 delivery also eased further by Yuan 31.5/dmt or 3.7% from Tuesday's settlement price, closing the daytime session at Yuan 813/dmt.
"Steel demand is still sluggish for the time being and the latest data about the country's property market is also not that good. These factors together have dampened the market sentiment," a Shanghai-based analyst commented.
Mysteel's data showed that over the past two weeks, the spot trading volume of construction steel comprising rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil among the 237 Chinese traders regularly tracked was still below the psychological threshold of 200,000 tonnes/day on average most of the time.
Last month, the total area of newly launched property projects contracted for the first time in seven months, easing by 0.9% on year to about 1.2 billion sq metres, according to the latest data from the country's National Bureau of Statistics.
"For the iron ore market, it's hard to imagine an end to the downtrend in ore prices at this moment, as ore demand is still tepid. That's because there's been no remarkable improvement in steelmakers' production - which is not surprising when steel prices are weak too," the analyst also remarked.
By August 17, Mysteel PORTDEX 62% Australian Fines price in Qingdao had declined to Yuan 1,133/wmt FOT and including 13% VAT, a low since March 31.
Written by Victoria Zou, zyongjia@mysteel.com
This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.
