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Iron ore futures rose for a second straight session on Thursday as investors weighed prospects of additional measures to shore up China’s flagging economy against domestic steel production cuts and uncertainty about the country’s property sector.
Fresh stimulus hopes for the world’s second-biggest economy and top metals consumer have provided support for iron ore after prices hit six-week lows earlier this week, dragged partly by worries about a debt crisis engulfing many Chinese property developers.
The steelmaking ingredient’s benchmark November contract on the Singapore Exchange SZZFX3 was up 1.8% at $114.55 per metric ton, as of 0710 GMT.
The most-traded January iron ore on China’s Dalian Commodity Exchange DCIOcv1 ended daytime trade 1.6% higher at 837 yuan ($114.71) per ton.
China’s policymakers are weighing the issuance of at least 1 trillion yuan ($136.94 billion) of additional sovereign debt for spending on infrastructure such as water conservancy projects, Bloomberg News reported this week, citing people familiar with the matter.
Traders were also assessing iron ore supply and demand prospects.
“We will closely track the market opportunities brought about by macroeconomic policies, the output loss caused by (an incident at) Aboriginal sites at Rio Tinto mines, and the intensity of raw material replenishment in the coming winter,” Huatai Futures analysts said in a note.
Aboriginal elders have walked off a heritage survey on a Rio Tinto iron ore project in Western Australia over concerns the global miner has played down the harm it caused them after blasting impacted an Indigenous rock shelter in August.
Chinese steel benchmarks and prices of other steel raw materials also rose, with coking coal DJMcv1 and coke DCJcv1 on the Dalian exchange both up 0.6%.
On the Shanghai Futures Exchange, rebar SRBcv1 gained 0.3%, hot-rolled coil SHHCcv1 added 0.4%, and stainless steel SHSScv1 climbed 1.6%.