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Welcome to the end of the Thursday session, today’s Market Close will be article-only, but keep an eye on the homepage for the latest edition of the HotCopper Wire podcast hosted by Editor Isaac McIntyre and myself – this week, we went into Venezuela, 4DX Medical, copper prices, China’s latest tariffs on Australian beef, and the Bluescope saga.
Listen to the HotCopper podcast for in-depth discussions and insights on all the biggest headlines from throughout the week. On Spotify, Apple, and more.
But you can listen to the podcast to hear about all of that. Let’s turn to the Thursday intraday session on the ASX 200. In a word? It was boring, at least that’s what this finance journalist perceives.
The big story this week is the Bluescope takeover offer, which was knocked back by BSL today, though it’s debatable whether this is truly ‘news’ – we already knew management were looking for things wrong with the car, so to speak.
Materials also clocked top faller status on a sector-by-sector breakdown in the final half hour of Thursday trades as an easing gold price sent investors scuttling; Health Care led the gainers, driven up by CSL Ltd, which jumped over +2.5%.
The materials sell-off is interesting because it also shrugs off a fairly noteworthy development on iron ore markets – over in Singapore, iron ore futures were fetching US$109/tn this morning, the highest price they’ve been since at least August of 2024.
The culprit? Yet another raft of announcements from China that the company will be stimulating its economy; we’ve been hearing about that for the last three years since lockdowns lifted, and so far nothing has worked. But with the merriment of a new year not far behind us and a global metals rally coinciding, perhaps it’s not too irrational prices have gone so high.
(Just remember China thinks it’s “irrational” to be paying more than US$100/tn, a comment issued in a government-linked Chinese steel journal in August last year.)
Whether that stays the case on the mid-term horizon remains to be seen, but I suspect the global rally part of the equation might have more to do with iron ore futures hitting US$109/tn as opposed to renewed investor enthusiasm for what is effectively yet another promise from the Chinese government that things will get better. Somehow.
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