Iron ore prices are reflecting 'slightly bearish' economic sentiment in China: SGX Group

As a bellwether of the global economy and how it’s performing, water flows. What a market conditions telling us. You know, the superpower appeal of iron ore is that it’s so ubiquitous, right? So if you kind of compare it alongside crude oil, crude oil being feedstock and energy reference are, you know, is such a good approximation of the broader economic and industrial activity. And what is basically telling us is it reflects what’s happening in China being the world’s largest steel producer. It’s also telling us some of the economic conditions in China. Is it telling us anything about the China economy bottoming? Is it telling us in the longer term? Are there any projections? Or any assumptions about Peak Steel and how that could be problematic for structural demand now if you compare the current iron ore pricing to where it was a year ago when we were talking? About the Ferris week, I know prices aren’t too different to where it was last year was fairly depressing. I would say the markets kind of iron Ore’s kind of bounced at the end of the year to a high of you know 1:30-ish from the current one, you know $17.00 each. So I think, you know there’s been some reaction to iron ore kind of bouncing from the optimism that came out of China at towards the back end of 2023. Market prices have kind of slid a little back to kind of the low hundreds and it’s now kind of rebounded a little. So it’s telling you a couple of things one. I think economic sentiment, it’s widely published, continues to remain slightly perished. That’s it. Iron ore prices being such a good indicator of a multidimensionality of economic conditions is basically reflecting also some expectations of stimulus coming out of China. William Ferris, metals with iron, of course, you talked about China. There’s also India infrastructure manufacturing. What about EVs though? What about EVs? Now EVs are largely reflected in copper as a electrical conductivity. Where iron ore and steel comes in would be the fact that it kind of fits into the the sustainability infrastructure. So if you start thinking about solar panels, you start thinking about the bits that goes into a windmill for example. So it’s got a very, very key role to play when it comes to the ESG agenda.