Chinese steel futures rebounded on Thursday afternoon after falling to new lows in the morning as the market found a resting place until further signals announced the next move. The wait may not be long, however, as iron ore prices appeared to lose the gains of the last week and a half, Kallanish observes.

The January 2015 rebar contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange hit Yuan 2,510/tonne ($408/t) in morning trading before rebounding to close up Yuan 18/t at Yuan 2,550/t. The same contract for hot rolled coil hit a low of Yuan 2,754/t before closing up Yuan 2/t at Yuan 2,810/t.

Iron ore appeared to be losing ground again on the GlobalORE exchange with one 90,000 tonne cargo on 62% Fe MNP fines trading at $78.50/dry metric tonne cfr Qingdao for November delivery. The grade had traded at $80.30/dmt on Tuesday after iron ore prices recovered slightly over the Chinese national holiday over 1-7 October.

A second cargo of 90,000t of 62% Fe MNP fines was contracted on the same terms to settle against the Platts 62% Fe index.

Whatever the movement of the futures price, wider sentiment in the Chinese economy has taken a battering over recent weeks. Prices of commodities monitored by the National Bureau of Statistics were almost universally down over September. Liquefied petroleum gas saw gains but all steel and most non-ferrous metal products, as well as oil and liquefied natural gas prices fell.