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Hopes a floor in the iron ore price had been reached earlier this week were dashed overnight as the commodity sunk to a new five-year low.
At the end of the offshore session on Tuesday, benchmark iron ore for immediate delivery to the port of Tianjin in China was trading at $US68.60 a tonne, down 2 per cent from its previous close of $US70 a tonne. It also left the commodity at its lowest level since the middle of 2009, eclipsing the previous 2014 low of $US69.80 reached on Friday.
Iron ore prices are now 50 per cent off the levels seen at the start of the year, leaving almost the entire Australian sector outside BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and, perhaps, Fortescue Metals Group under water. All three heavyweights are seeing profits erode, with Fortescue's margins, in particular, in grave danger.
Despite the fresh falls Rio's UK-listed stock managed to eke out a slim 0.2 per cent gain overnight, but this likely owed more to the prospect of fresh M&A activity from suitor Glencore next year rather than investor indifference to the iron ore price falls.
Rival BHP didn't fare so well, losing 1.7 per cent in London trade.
The moves come ahead of a likely revision in the pricing expectations of the Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics (BREE) next month, with the official government forecaster tipped to slash its forward projections. Its most recent forecast called for a pricing range of $US90-$US105 a tonne over the next five years.
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- [Editor:sunzhichao]
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