The news is flying! OPEC+ may consider keeping April output unchanged
OPEC+’s latest production cut trend has affected the market.
Yesterday, Reuters reported that three OPEC+ sources said that several OPEC+ oil-producing countries currently support maintaining the 4 Opinion that monthly output remains unchanged. It is unclear whether Saudi Arabia will end its voluntary production cuts in March or extend them further.
Affected by this news, international oil prices rose. As of early morning today, WTI April crude oil futures closed up $1.53, or 2.56%, at $61.28 per barrel. Brent crude oil futures for April closed up $1.37, or 2.18%, at $64.07 per barrel.
The U.S. ADP data fell short of expectations, and the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book predicted a moderate price increase
On the evening of March 3rd, Beijing time, it was called The February ADP employment data for the “small non-agricultural sector” of the United States is released. Data show that private companies added 117,000 jobs in February. Not only was it weaker than the previous market expectation of 225,000, it was also weaker than the January ADP data, which was revised upward to 195,000.
It is worth mentioning that in the early morning of March 4, Beijing time, the Beige Book survey report released by the Federal Reserve showed that economic activity in most regions has been moderate recently. Expansion, as the new crown vaccine becomes more and more popular, most companies are optimistic about the prospects in the next 6-12 months.
As for the inflation issue that the market is concerned about, the Federal Reserve stated in the report that prices in many regions are expected to rise moderately in the coming months. Non-labor input costs rose modestly during the reporting period, but steel and lumber prices rose sharply, house prices continued to rise in many areas, and oil and gas production activity picked up slightly.
LME nickel fell more than 7.8%, the largest drop in more than four years
Last night , LME nickel fell sharply during the session, once falling nearly 8%. As of early morning today, LME nickel fell 7.46% to close at $17,280/ton. Tu Licheng, a nonferrous analyst at Jinrui Futures, believes that the current sharp decline in Lunni is mainly due to the opening of the path from Qingshan Ferronickel to High Matte Nickel, and the expected shortage of nickel sulfate raw materials required for new energy has been broken.
It is understood that on March 1, Tsingshan Industrial signed a high matte nickel supply agreement with Huayou Cobalt and Zhongwei Co., Ltd. The three parties jointly agreed that Tsingshan Industrial will supply 60,000 tons of high matte nickel to Huayou Cobalt and 40,000 tons of high matte nickel to Zhongwei Co., Ltd. within one year starting from October 2021.
In order to further improve the industrial chain in the new energy field and further meet the demand for nickel in power batteries, Tsingshan Industrial began commissioning and trial production of high matte nickel in Indonesia in July 2020 to produce nickel content More than 75% high nickel matte. This process has been successfully trial-produced at the end of 2020, and is now able to stably supply high-quality and high-quality nickel matte.
Tsingshan Industrial will continue to increase investment in the Indonesian nickel industry. It is expected to produce 600,000 tons of nickel equivalent in 2021, 850,000 tons of nickel equivalent in 2022, and 850,000 tons of nickel equivalent in 2023. Nickel equivalent is 1.1 million tons. Among them, the output of high matte nickel and ferronickel will be switched and adjusted according to market demand and changes.
Black series “Return of the King”, coking coal rose 6%
This Wednesday, domestic Most varieties of the futures market closed higher, with black commodities leading the gains. Coking coal rose by more than 6%, and rebar rose by more than 3%, hitting a new high in the past 10 years. In terms of non-ferrous metals, Shanghai Aluminum rose by more than 4%; Douyi’s main contract rose by more than 4%. 3%, hitting a record high of 6281 yuan/ton during the session. In addition, the intraday prices of glass and soda ash hit record highs again.
After the Spring Festival holiday, under the background of high production and low demand, rebar futures went through a wave of oscillating upward trends. On Tuesday night, the news of production restrictions in Tangshan pushed the market price to accelerate. , the main contract of rebar rose to a maximum of 4924 yuan/ton.
“Judging from the production restriction document released by Tangshan yesterday and what we have learned, the impact of shutting down the blast furnace on the overall supply is limited. In fact, what is more worthy of attention is that pollutants The total emission restriction policy and the requirement that the total emission reduction shall not be less than 45% will need to be paid attention to in the future whether this policy will be extended to other provinces and whether the upcoming National Two Sessions will announce some new policies to reduce crude steel production. .” said Liu Huifeng, a black analyst at Donghai Futures.
Xia Xuezhao, a black analyst at Southwest Futures, told a reporter from Futures Daily that the volume of transactions in the domestic spot market has increased significantly this week. The volume of building materials traded by traders across the country is close to 200,000 tons, which is close to peak season levels. Indicates that downstream demand is starting rapidly. “Recently, ‘carbon neutrality’ has become a hot topic in the capital market. At the end of last year, the Central Economic Work Conference designated ‘carbon peaking’ and ‘carbon neutrality’ as one of the eight key tasks of this year’s economic work. The steel industry’s carbon emissions accounted for the largest share in the country. About 15% of the total, the task of reducing emissions is arduous. Based on this, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has emphasized many times since the end of last year that it will strive to achieve negative growth in crude steel production this year. On Monday, the Minister of Industry and Information Technology once again reiterated that smelting capacity will be significantly reduced this year, with specific plans It is being formulated. Against this background, the expectation of steel supply contraction in the medium term may always exist.”
Looking forward to the market outlook, Xia Xuezhao believes that in the context of carbon neutrality, steel in the medium term Expectations of supply contraction may persist, coupled withThe demand for building materials will still have some resilience in the first half of the year, and the upward trend of rebar may not change in the medium term.
In Liu Huifeng’s view, the recovery speed of building materials supply and demand may be phased out in the short term. On the one hand, the production reduction of long-process steel mills during the Spring Festival has been falsified, and the daily average molten iron in blast furnaces has remained high, and there is a high probability that it will continue to rise month-on-month from March to April. Stimulated by high profits, mini-process steel mills are also expected to resume production soon. On the other hand, the demand for building materials is currently recovering relatively slowly, and high-frequency indicators such as apparent consumption of rebar and Shanghai wire screw terminal purchases are all at low levels during the same period. Rebar inventories are also continuing to accumulate, and the current inventory data is 3.71 million tons higher than the same period last year. At the same time, we have seen that after this round of rapid increases, the main rebar contract has slightly risen above the spot price, indicating that the market has overdrawn some of the positive expectations in the later period. Once the demand recovery in the next 1-2 weeks is less than expected, the market price may be phased. A callback is possible. Therefore, if demand recovery falls short of expectations in the next 1-2 weeks, prices may experience a periodic correction.
In terms of coking coal, due to excessive energy consumption, the coal washing plants in Ubulangkou Jinquan Industrial Park near Ganqimaodu Port have received verbal notices from the local government one after another. The entire factory stopped production for a month. Wubulangkou Jinquan Industrial Park is an important coal washing site for imported Mongolian coal at Ganqimaodu Port. Hao Xiaoxiao, a coking coal researcher at Founder Mid-term Futures, told a reporter from Futures Daily that there are about 15 coal washing plants in Ubulangkou Jinquan Industrial Park, with a coal washing capacity of more than 20 million tons. This move will provide strong support for Mongolian coking coal. Affected by this news, coking coal futures prices rose sharply.
Looking forward to the market outlook, Hao Xiaoxiao believes that in the short term, the second round of downstream coke reduction has been implemented. Since the downstream steel demand has not yet started, steel mills may still further suppress coke. price. The decline in profits of coking companies will continue to suppress coking coal prices, and the short-term rise in coking coal will be under pressure. In the medium and long term, on the one hand, 2021 is a big year for coking coal production, and most of the production capacity will be put into operation in the second half of 2021. The demand for coking coal will gradually increase in the later period. On the other hand, the current Australian coal imports are still strict, and the Australian coal import volume will decline. However, Mongolian coal will be difficult to replenish in the short term. The supply of coking coal will be tight in the later period, and its future price trend will be significantly stronger than that of coke.
Wang Zeyong, a metal analyst at Nanhua Futures, believes that global coal shipments to China have declined sharply since the beginning of the month, and imports to Hong Kong have already declined. At the same time, the supply of coal mines is relatively high year-on-year. However, during the “Two Sessions” period, coal mine safety issues became prominent, and the thermal coal supply guarantee policy began to be gradually withdrawn, and the overall supply is expected to shrink. On the demand side, downstream coking coal inventories are on the high side and are still undergoing seasonal destocking. Short-term supply and demand are both weak, and there is not much room for rebound.
Glass and soda ash hit record highs again
Yesterday, soda ash and glass futures remained strong operation, intraday prices hit new highs since listing. Analysts pointed out that the key to detonating the strong post-holiday soda ash market is that the market is optimistic about terminal demand expectations, which in turn leads to a surge in market demand for stockpiles.
It is worth noting that the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange issued a notice last night, deciding that starting from the night trading on March 5, 2021, the soda ash futures 2105 contract will close today’s positions within the day. The standard handling fee is adjusted to 9 yuan/lot.
“Soda ash is the upstream of glass. On the one hand, this round of rise has a strong demand to make up for the increase compared to other commodities itself. On the other hand, the market is driving the expansion of photovoltaic production in the second half of the year. Soda ash demand is optimistic.” Fan Ajiao, energy and chemical industrial products analyst at Hongye Futures, said that the high prosperity of the glass industry will drive the repair of the soda ash supply and demand balance sheet. According to incomplete statistics, the country is expected to add 15,700 tons of photovoltaic production capacity per day in 2021, but it will mainly be put into operation in the second half of 2021. In the first half of 2021, only 5,000 tons/day was put into production, and the annual demand for soda ash only increased by 360,000 tons, accounting for only 1% of the total soda ash production capacity. Therefore, the actual change in supply and demand pattern will depend on the second half of 2021 or even 2022.
Wei Chaoming, a glass researcher at Founder Mid-term Futures, believes that the key driving factor for soda ash and glass is that downstream traders and end users have a solid foundation for the resumption of work after the holidays under the low inventory situation. Replenishment requirements. “The current market demand for soda ash and the expected market demand in the next six months have improved significantly. As the demand for heavy alkali for ordinary float glass has steadily increased, the subsidence of the epidemic impact has led to the recovery growth of light alkali demand and the growth of photovoltaic glass. With large-scale production put into operation, soda ash will quickly change from oversupply at the beginning of the year to undersupply, and the price trend will turn from falling to rising. At the same time, under the expectation of tightening supply and demand, there is a shortage of supply that meets the production date requirements and can participate in the delivery of the goods. The performance of soda ash futures is better than that of spot goods. To be strong.”
However, Wei Chaoming said that glass and soda ash futures prices have continued to rise, and market risks are accumulating. The glass factory’s stockpiling lasted from before to after the Spring Festival. The current soda ash inventory level is relatively high, and the stockpiling is basically coming to an end. Soda ash shipments are mainly based on pre-holiday orders. However, glass processing profits are on a downward trend. Production capacity has not changed much recently, supply is stable, downstream enthusiasm for picking up goods continues, and traders and processing companies accelerate inventory replenishment, which drives glass production companies to continue to digest the accumulated inventory during the Spring Festival. In the short term, prices may maintain high oscillations, and beware of high-level corrections. In the long term, investors need to pay attention to the fact that the glass supply and demand structure will shift from short supply to basically balanced in 2021. After a large amount of photovoltaic glass production capacity is put into production in the fourth quarter, some ultra-white glass production capacity will be converted to ordinary white glass, which will bring new supply growth. quantity.
It should be noted that the glass supply and demand structure will shift from short supply to basically balanced in 2021. After a large amount of photovoltaic glass production capacity is put into production in the fourth quarter, some ultra-white glass production capacity will be converted to ordinary white glass, which will bring new supply increases. </p
