Iron ore is trading near US$130/t, with investment bank analysts...

Iron ore is trading near US$130/t, with investment bank analysts ratcheting up forecasts for 2024Big banks remain more sceptical that iron ore can hold as China’s property market and emissions reduction hopes loomGlencore joins with Asian steelmakers in US$9bn buy out of Teck’s Canadian met coal ops

Iron ore has surprised as one of the sturdiest commodities in a year when the fashionable and ‘future-proofed’ like lithium and graphite have stumbled.

Now trading in the vicinity of US$130/t it’s been a tour de force of endurance for the old world metal, as weakness in China’s property sector and concerns around carbon emissions that should logically have sent prices of the Pilbara fortune maker falling have held little sway.

Instead major investment banks like Goldman Sachs, UBS and JPMorgan have turned bullish, ramping iron ore forecasts for 2024 in the direction of US$110/t, highly profitable for the big boys and not too shabby for the marginal producers.

GS, for instance, now sees a material deficit in 2023, having previously projected a 68Mt surplus.

It says supply is faltering, partly out of Australia but especially from Vale in Brazil, which kicked off the latest bull run in iron ore when it was forced to curtail operations in the wake of the Brumadinho dam disaster in January 2019.