1、 Price trend

According to the monitoring of business news agency, the price of steam coal fell this week. On January 18, the average port price of steam coal was maintained at 1037.5 yuan / ton, and on January 22, the average port price of steam coal was maintained at 958.75 yuan / ton, with a price drop of 7.59% and a year-on-year increase of 70.68%. On January 21, the steam coal commodity index was 120.48, down 4.07 points from yesterday, down 3.62% from the highest point of 125.00 points (2021-01-19) in the cycle, and up 169.53% from the lowest point of 44.70 points on January 20, 2016. (Note: period refers to the period from September 1, 2011 to now)

2、 Analysis of influencing factors

In terms of producing area, the price of producing area is still rising. Due to the severe epidemic situation in the main producing area, some coal mines stop production. The coal price in Inner Mongolia is stable, because the approved production capacity in a few areas has been used up and production has been suspended; in Shaanxi, because of the prevention and control of public health incidents, coal pulling has decreased. Overall supply is still relatively tight.

Downstream power plants: due to the rising temperature, the daily consumption of power plants decreased and the inventory of power plants increased. On the demand side, the pressure of power generation is relieved and the demand is decreased. Moreover, the power plant held a wait-and-see attitude towards the steam coal in February, and some traders lowered their prices to actively ship. The demand game between the buyer and the seller is mainly due to the uncertainty of power plant daily consumption in February.

Macro: on January 18, the National Bureau of statistics released the main data of industrial production above designated scale from January to December in 2020. In December, the national raw coal output was 351.89 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 3.2%, 1.7 percentage points faster than that of last month; the daily output was 11.35 million tons, a month on month decrease of 230000 tons. From January to December, China’s raw coal output was 3843.74 million tons, up 0.9% year on year. According to the Ministry of Commerce, the national coal prices rose slightly last week (January 11 to January 17), with the prices of steam coal, No.2 anthracite lump coal and coking coal rising 1.1%, 0.3% and 0.3% to 630 yuan, 959 yuan and 777 yuan per ton, respectively.

Business analysts believe that: the Spring Festival is approaching, the temperature in the south is about to pick up, and the daily consumption of steam coal may have reached a high point. The power plant had accumulated a large amount of inventory before, which reduced the short-term purchasing pressure and affected the transaction in the short-term spot market. However, the market has different attitudes towards the daily consumption of power plants in February. Overall, short-term steam coal prices or maintain a narrow consolidation market, specific to the downstream market demand.