The iron ore prices have declined yet again by 12% to 29% during last week giving nightmares to the miners and traders who had been basking till recently in the past glory of over 75 days rally in February to April.
The purging started on 30th April after a prolonged resistance by the traders. The inevitable slide has become steeper in the recent weeks as there has been a reduction of 6% in Iron ore fines prices within a span of 3 days raising many eye brows. However buyers still remained on the sidelines and there were hardly any physical transactions.
Indian iron ore prices crashed further by about 4% to 10% for various grades on week closing to bring the total crash to 20% for higher grades and about 40% for lower grades since last peak of April 29th 2010.
At present, the situation for Indian sellers is quite grim as the Chinese buyers are taking advantage of distressed cargos to push the CFR levels down and have already achieved USD 150 levels.
As per some market players, we shall be seeing minimum USD 120 per tonne FOB levels for 63.5%/63% grade very soon before the market rebounds.