JG, technically the spot market is open but is not seeing any trades (it was quiet leading up to the holidays). The NY celebs end tomorrow and they'll be back at work on the Monday. I've been information starved this week, but the general consensus was that the market would be up on the resumption of business.
We may start seeing a few Chinese domestic producers restart operations in the coming month (many mines shut down in Sept /Oct and were expected to remain shut until the safety checks that are due this month). The steel mills have jacked up their offers for locally produced io so it may entice some to come back onto the market. IO held as inventories by factories is very low (forget what the papers are saying about a restocking rally), they're finding it difficult to procure sufficient supplies for production. IO traders/firms hold little io as inventory and want high prices for the little amount of stock they have. So expecting the io spot to travel to $180 by the end of month, as people in the short term will need to secure material. Steel inventories as held by factories have crept up the last month, but that's only because it's winter and hence difficult to truck the stuff out.
I'm such a bad forecaster, I was expecting the value per trade on the exchange to crash through the $5k barrier in March... not to be, yesterday was the big celebration party for the bots. Very scary, any switch in the current trend will likely see the bots move to sell mode, except the current money trading the market is $3.8b a day, which is causing total valuation moves of $65b per day and about ~$600b or so since the start of the year. Compare that to last year, when money trading the market was $4.5b a day. There's negative money flow supporting increased valuations... my head says much of the market will undergo a swift correction.
AGO Price at posting:
$1.87 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
