Indian export offers for high grade iron ore fines (with Fe content of 63.5 percent and higher) have moved within a narrow range for the most part of the past week, edging down by a slight margin of $0.70/mt to $58.70/mt CFR China, but pessimism and poor sentiment have persisted in the market, traders said on Friday, May 12.
“There is just no support for the current market. Both fundamentals and futures trading are in a very strong bearish zone,” an Odisha-based miner-exporter said.
“Indian offers have recorded losses for the sixth consecutive week and very few market participants have a clue regarding the next bottom, and so buyers are reluctant to purchase any significant volumes,” the miner-exporter said.
“The decline rate in offers slowed down with a slight gain of $1/mt on the last day of the week. But in the absence of most key drivers such as finished steel prices, even the slight gains seen during two days of the week are unlikely to be sustained,” he added.
At least two aggregating traders said that, while miner-exporters are seen to be concluding very small transaction volumes, most aggregating traders are absent from the market as there are no margins for them at current offer levels due to appreciation of the rupee against the US dollar.
Sources said that traders representing Chinese steel mills are largely absent, indicating that the latter are still sourcing raw materials from port stocks with no appetite for fresh overseas bookings.