Fastmarkets clarifies the inclusion of conditional bids, offers in CFR China iron ore assessments

Market intelligence carrying counterparty restrictions, such as bids and offers on trading platforms that limit which companies can accept them, may be considered for normalization or discarded. Fastmarkets’ price assessments are intended to reflect the ‘open and competitive’ market level. Market intelligence carrying restrictions, such as offers restricting the number of buyers or sellers, can represent a different pricing level than those that are open and competitive.

Reporters therefore may apply expert judgment to exclude data deemed unrepresentative, questionable or unreliable prior to consideration in the final assessment. Fastmarkets reporters establish a data hierarchy when weighing all available datapoints including completeness of data, trustworthiness of the data points, how aligned the data is with Fastmarkets methodology and whether the data carries restrictions such as limiting counterparties.

Fastmarkets continues to engage a broad and balanced range of physical market participants in the provision of data. Its Data Submitter Policy provides guidelines to ensure the high level of data quality and integrity that is expected from contributing organisations providing pricing data. The policy can be found on Fastmarkets’ website or is available upon request.

To provide feedback on Fastmarkets’ iron ore indices, or if you would like to provide price information by becoming a data submitter to these indices, please contact pricing@fastmarkets.com and steelrawmaterials@fastmarkets.com. Please add the subject heading “re: clarification of inclusion of conditional bids/offers in CFR China iron ore.”

Please indicate if comments are confidential. Fastmarkets will consider all comments received and will make comments not marked as confidential available upon request.

To see all Fastmarkets pricing methodology and specification documents, go to the Fastmarkets methodology page.