Indian export offers for high grade iron ore fines (with Fe content of 63.5 percent and higher) have moved within a narrow range during the past week in either direction and have closed the week unchanged at $64.80/mt CFR China, with market participants cautious in view of conflicting key drivers, traders said on Friday, March 30.
“The physical market seems to be detached from key drivers. Even recoveries in the futures trade and finished steel prices are not instilling any confidence among raw material buyers,” an Odisha-based miner-exporter said.
“Although Indian offers recovered from a weekly low of $63/mt, the recovery towards the close of the week was too tentative. Trading volumes were almost negligible, with most buyers receiving offers but not responding, anticipating further downside potential, and so they have preferred to wait,” the miner-exporter added.
At least two other traders said that uncertainties and jitters over international trade conflicts are casting a heavy shadow on sentiments and that this is driving the market more than ferrous market fundamentals.
At the same time, the extended weekend owing to the Easter Holidays prompted many Singapore-based traders representing Chinese steel mills to pull out of Indian market early in the week, aggravating the already moribund activity, the traders added.