🔹 Market Overview

On Friday night, coking coal futures surged with significant volume and open interest increases, posting a strong weekly gain of 6.6%.

Coking coal has now broken through its previous resistance range, establishing a clear uptrend, and is expected to remain strong in the short term. It is currently the core driver within the ferrous complex, leading the overall market upward.

  • Iron ore followed with a weekly gain of 1.92%
  • Rebar and hot-rolled coil (HRC) posted smaller gains of less than 1%

Additionally, we observed that long-dated contracts rose more sharply than near-term ones, while basis values weakened by 20–30 yuan last week. This reflects bullish expectations being priced into the curve while spot demand lags behind.

🔸 Market Drivers

The ongoing rally is primarily driven by:

  1. Improved market sentiment
  2. Rising coking coal prices fueling bullish momentum

Currently, bullish sentiment is still gaining ground. From a technical perspective, finished steel prices are now near the upper end of their recent trading range, and the probability of a breakout this week is high.

🔹 Macro Events – Recent and Upcoming

Last week:

  • The U.S. Dollar Index fell sharply from 98.6 to 96.8 (−2%), offering broad support for commodities
  • Comments from President Trump and U.S. officials suggested that July 9 may no longer be a hard deadline for new tariffs, adding to positive sentiment

This week:

  • Monday (Today): China’s Manufacturing PMI (previous: 49.5). A small deviation is unlikely to impact the market significantly.
  • Thursday: U.S. Nonfarm Payrolls and ISM Non-Manufacturing PMI — these will influence expectations for the July 31 Federal Reserve meeting

🔸 Weekly Outlook

We expect the market to continue its upward move at the start of the week, with raw materials outperforming finished products in terms of gains.

🔹 Key Levels to Watch

  • Resistance zones: 3050 → 3100 → 3150
  • Support level: 2985

We assess that a break above 3050 is likely, with short-term consolidation expected between 3050 and 3100.

📌 Daily insights provided by LangZo Steel. For reprints, please credit LangZo Steel.