Iron ore price plunges as China fails to deliver fresh stimulus

Bloomberg News | October 7, 2024 | 10:31 pm Markets Australia Canada China Europe USA Cobalt Copper Iron Ore Nickel Zinc

Hands up who wanted more stimulus. Image of Dongtai Lu antique market figurines in Shanghai, 2007 by claudio zaccherini / Shutterstock.com

Iron ore slumped from a five-month high and base metals fell, after a hotly anticipated briefing by China’s top economic planner ended without new pledges to boost government spending.

Officials from the National Development and Reform Commission offered little to investors, who had been expecting more stimulus measures on China’s first day back from a week-long public holiday.

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Iron ore futures in Singapore fell more than 5% after rising by nearly that amount ahead of the briefing. Copper dropped to its lowest in two weeks in a sharp sell-off across base metals, while investor disappointment was reflected across wider Chinese markets.

“There had been talk that the NDRC may announce trillions of yuan in stimulus, but it came out with nothing at all,” said Hang Jiang, head of trading at Yonggang Resources Co. in Shanghai.

Iron ore futures are still up almost a fifth from late-September on optimism that Beijing’s earlier moves to boost the economy would end a period of deep gloom for China’s steel industry. Demand for the steelmaking ingredient has suffered amid a years-long property crisis.

Investors are still looking for more concrete signs that the government’s pledges will feed through to real economic activity. The NDRC officials said they would speed up spending, but their comments on investment and support for low-income groups were largely reiterations of previous pledges.

“The stimulus from China so far is not going to yield a significant turnaround for base metals,” Yonggang’s Jiang said. “We need to see stimulus feed into a real pickup in consumption before we can see big price rallies.”

Not enough

Copper and other metals have now wiped out most of their gains since Beijing rolled out a blitz of policy measures in the days before China’s Golden Week break. Tuesday morning’s briefing by the NDRC was announced over the weekend, triggering a wave of speculation about additional pro-growth moves.

Investors are “disappointed” after putting such high expectations on the NDRC briefing, said Jia Zheng, head of trading at Shanghai Soochow Jiuying Investment Co. Sustaining recent price gains requires more fund inflows, she said.

Iron ore fell 5.1% to $105.10 a ton on the Singapore Exchange as of 11:49 a.m. in London. Copper dropped 1.7% to $9,766 a ton on the London Metal Exchange, heading for its lowest close since Sept. 23. Aluminum, zinc, nickel, lead and tin all lost more than 2%.

Base metals should get support from the “material shift in China policy” since last month, Citigroup Inc. said in a note ahead of the NDRC briefing. But other global risks — from the US election to weak European growth and Middle East conflicts — would likely keep a lid on prices beyond the near term, they said.