Let's all be happy, page-40

I happen to work directly in the Fe market as a "real" broker of the underlying physical stuff. The Red Dirt. There were very few new Chinese buying orders for most of the last 2 months of 2014. There were still many ships queuing up every day at Port Headland and Dampier - mainly existing contract cargoes. There is heaps of this stuff on the planet but Rio, BHP and Vale have it operationally by the proverbial + Gina thinks she can make a few bob with a supposedly low cost operation coming on stream later this year. When China slows down (probably sub 7% by the old GDP growth measure) there is very little demand to replace what is lost. Add to this the fact that China is annoying the hell out of quite a few countries by its dumping of spare inventory -that can't last. Add to that the often ignored fact of scrap in China and elsewhere. In China scrap will be a significant input to overall steel production in the years ahead. Blast furnaces to be replaced by Electric Arc for that purpose. As I said before India is not necessarily the saviour either since they have plenty of crappy fines themselves.

Don't forget that big miners made plenty of money on Fe at $40 per dmt delivered (CFR) going back to before the Chinese "explosion". Don't forget that bulk shipping daily rates were over $100,000 per day when Fe breached $180 per dmt!! Maybe about a 10th of that today or less on basis $7 per dmt for the whole trip from Oz to East Coast China.

Just some food for thought perhaps -all will be revealed in time!!