On Wednesday morning, the market rumor that Shanxi Lu 'an Group coal mine plans to reduce production by 17 million tons, and Shanmei International coal mine plans to reduce production by 8 million tons, leading to tighter coking coal supply expectations, coking coal futures prices rose sharply, and then promoted steel prices. However, the overall coking coal spot price performance is stable, Changzhi Luzhou coking coal online auction transaction price fell slightly. After the Spring Festival, the price of black commodities fell for two consecutive days, but the price of coal coke and steel rose sharply yesterday, and the price of iron ore still fell sharply. On February 20, the spot price of Shanghai rebar was 3830 yuan/ton, down 0.78% compared with the pre-holiday; The main May contract of rebar futures closed at 3,753 yuan/ton, down 2.6% from before the holiday. For the sharp decline of two consecutive trading days after the festival, Zhuo Guiqiu, senior analyst of Jinrui Capital Black, believes that the first is suppressed by the high inventory of rebar itself. During the Spring Festival, the seasonal accumulation of rebar increased by 1.63 million tons compared with before the festival, and the lunar year increased by 954,000 tons, and the ratio of storage consumption hit a new high in the same period of the lunar year in recent years. The second is the slow recovery of molten iron production, 247 steel mills molten iron daily output of 2,245,600 tons, the lunar year reduced 20,100 tons, but the steel steel imported iron ore storage consumption ratio and coking plant coking coal storage consumption ratio are higher than the same period last year, triggering the negative feedbacks of raw materials, dragging down steel prices. Third, the increase in the supply of non-mainstream iron ore mines exceeded expectations, and the shift in the focus of iron ore prices further dragged down steel prices. Relevant data show that during the Spring Festival, 45 ports of iron ore to the port of 25.285 million tons, basically unchanged from the week before the festival, but the slow recovery of hot metal led to increased pressure on iron ore storage. At the same time, there were reports that Brazil and Ukraine in January iron ore shipments exceeded expectations, adding to the non-mainstream mine iron ore supply growth than expected and the iron ore balance sheet excess increased concerns.
Wang Jingjing, senior analyst of Zhongda Futures, believes that real estate sales during the Spring Festival are generally good, and the market expects that steel demand will continue to be weak after the festival. Since October last year, boosted by domestic and foreign policies, the market is generally optimistic about the demand for this year's peak season, and rebar futures prices have also risen continuously, and the expected trading time is earlier than in previous years, and the increase is also high. From the micro-data point of view, whether it is real estate or the three major projects, it takes time to start, and the superimposed real estate sales data has not seen a significant improvement, and the rebar futures price has begun to correction since January. In addition, the early supply and demand of raw materials tight balance, the price is still supported, but with the rapid decline in the daily production of hot metal and the slow recovery of hot metal after the festival, the supply and demand of raw materials gradually shifted from tight balance to slightly loose, opening up space for the negative feedback of the current round of black goods. "Although the price adjustment of rebar after the festival is large, the contradiction is not obvious from the fundamental situation. During the Spring Festival this year, the accumulation of rebar was significantly lower than expected." Liu Huifeng, chief researcher of the black metal of the East China Sea Futures, said that from the historical data, during the Spring Festival of the previous five years, the average rebar inventory was 3.375 million tons, and this year it was 1.6282 million tons, even if you do not consider the impact of the epidemic in the first two years, the increase is also at a low level. In view of the current demand is still in the off-season, the situation of spot sales after the holiday has not improved. It is understood that this year, the winter storage cost of rebar is generally 3800-3850 yuan/ton, two trading days after the festival, the price fell significantly, but on Wednesday by Shanxi coal mine production limit and a series of macro favorable policies, rebar plate prices rebounded significantly, market sentiment improved significantly. Follow-up sales of winter storage goods still need to observe the recovery of demand in the peak season.
It is reported that the current site resumption and labor rate is still at a low level. According to Centennial construction network statistics, from February 14 to 20, the country's 10,094 construction sites resumed work at 13.0%, an increase of 2 percentage points in the lunar calendar; The labor rate was 15.5%, an increase of 0.8 percentage points in the lunar calendar. "The major construction units in the country generally reflect that the total number of projects has decreased year-on-year, and the rate of return to work and the rate of labor service have increased year-on-year, mainly by the faster start of the construction project." Therefore, the demand for construction steel is still at the bottom and needs to be further released." Zhuo Guiqiu said. Wang also said that the downstream demand for steel is generally started after the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. From the perspective of industry, the real demand after the holiday is still difficult to determine. From the industry data during the Spring Festival, the apparent demand for rebar is close to the same period in previous years; On the supply side, due to the general loss of steel mills, the production of rebar has contracted sharply and is now at an extremely low level; On inventory, rebar inventory is still in a low position in the same period. Before the demand is fully started after the festival, the contradiction between supply and demand of rebar is not obvious, but with the release of the demand in the later period, and the thread production is affected by the profit difference between different varieties, it is expected that the recovery is slow, and the inventory is in a reasonably low position, it is expected that there is a wave of supply and demand mismatch after the festival.
Liu Huifeng believes that the two main logic of current market transactions are low demand expectations and lower cost support. Next, the "gold three silver four" is coming, the rebar market will enter the verification stage of real demand, the main focus of the market will turn to the real demand situation, the most intuitive indicator is when the inventory peak appears and the inventory bottom after the warehouse speed. At the same time, the policy adjustment in early March and possible policies will also be the focus of market attention. "Under normal circumstances, the post-holiday market mainly games the demand for steel, but the main contradiction at this stage is the slow resumption of hot metal production, the negative feedback caused by high inventory of raw materials, and the cost drives the price fluctuation of finished materials." Looking forward to the future market, the demand for rebar is expected to be released seasonally, but the strength remains to be observed, which can be tracked and verified through the rebar table. In terms of inventory, usually 3-4 weeks after the festival rebar will continue to accumulate, and the amplitude will gradually slow down. Before the inventory turning point, it is expected that rebar prices will continue to oscillate weakly driven by lower costs." Zhuo Guiqiu said. Wang Jing believes that in the short term, the current demand vacuum period is also a vacuum period of macro policy, in the demand falsification or confirmation, before the introduction of macro policies again, the main trading logic of the market will still be demand recovery less than expected. In the medium term, the market has begun to trade steel demand in early January to recover less than expected logic, and prices are expected to be close to the bottom of this round of correction. In the later stage, we should focus on the recovery of demand.
