Iron ore trouble spreads

Wednesday 9 September 2026

You wouldn’t know it from headline prices, but iron ore is in trouble.

Subtracting the $9, at least, to get to normal FOB prices, owing to shipping rates that are double the normal level, gives us low-90s prices for CFR. Iron ore has not budged for three months.

The news flow is poor. The latest CISA is confirming the MySteel output slowdown. We are well below the 2019 lows year on year.

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About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.