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| Lunar eclipse in dragon leaves an emaciated steel market - 07 Feb, 2012 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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One week into February after the lunar recess barely any activity is perceptible in the steel market in China. In prologue to the post holidays period there was pent up excitement about turn of events for good. Optimism was based on both surreal as well as real developments. Whereas the government made its maiden liberating foray with 50 basis points reduction in CRR , the markets where sitting on low inventory as a fall out of abysmal buying and fastidious production pruning . After the US downgrading and the ever deepening economic morass in European theatre Chinese steel market could never resurrect from a back breaking slide. Down but not yet out raw material prices always remained the elusive sword of Damocles keeping mills on the razors edge of eroding profitability. In fact despite omnipresent morose the iron ore prices never really came down below USD 140-145 per tonne CNF, China levels keeping up the ante on mills. A week down after the holiday the verdict is clear that the spring is missing from the market. Antithesis of the dynamics becomes clear with the inventory levels in both long and flat products ballooning during the holidays. One of the perpetrators of nemesis was the hype built over a plausible spike after holidays. Mills carried out production at a uniform rate however low buying during the holidays augmented inventory in each category.
CLPPI - Chinese Long Product Price Index CFPPI - Chinese Flat Product Price Index CHISPI - Chinese Steel Price Index These indices have base of 10,000 as on July 1st 2008 (Source: www.steelprices-china.com) The mere fact that the collapse has been averted gives some solace to an already beleaguered and weary market. High inventory low buying is the most dreaded situation. Gloom writ large in EU and declining levels in Black Sea and SE Asia an outlet for domestic volumes seems narrow thereby exerting pressure on domestic levels. To know exact prevailing steel prices in China on daily basis, subscribe to services of SteelHome by sending a mail to admin@steelprices-china.com Chinese steel price index down by 3 points on February 06 The Chinese Long Product Price Index CLPPI went down by 16 points on February 4th 2012, whereas the Chinese Flat Products Index CFPPI up by 6 points. The overall price index CHISPI decreased by 3 points.
CLPPI - Chinese Long Product Price Index CFPPI - Chinese Flat Product Price Index CHISPI - Chinese Steel Price Index Long Products
PI- Product Index Flat Products
PI- Product Index These indices have base of 10,000 as on July 1st 2008 To know more about these indices please visit http://steelprices-china.com/spi_services/spi.html To know exact prevailing steel prices in China on daily basis, subscribe to services of SteelHome by sending a mail to admin@steelprices-china.com (Sourced from www. steelprices-china.com) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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