On October 23, 2020 Steel China·Beijing Steel Industry Chain Summit Forum was held in Beijing. Representatives from steel companies and upstream and downstream companies from Beijing and surrounding areas attended the meeting to discuss issues such as future economic development, steel market trends, and steel industry chain construction.

At the meeting, Xu Xiangchun, Chief Information Officer of Shanghai Steel Union E-commerce Company, gave a keynote speech on "Iron and Steel Market Outlook in the Post-epidemic Period". He said that in the first three quarters of this year, my country's steel market mainly showed the characteristics of both supply and demand exceeding expectations, steel prices rebounding in a "V" shape, the overall market showing a pattern of "long-term weakness and strong board strength", and shrinking profits of steel varieties. He predicted that the fundamentals of the steel market in the fourth quarter will return to reality, with both positive and negative factors coexisting. From the perspective of positive factors, the development of infrastructure will drive the increase in steel demand; environmental protection and production restrictions in autumn and winter will form a strong support for steel costs. From the perspective of negative factors, the real estate market has cooled down, and the pulling effect on the demand for construction steel has weakened; superimposed into the off-season, market sentiment has turned cold.

Xu Xiangchun believes that the high point of steel demand this year has appeared in April; during the "Golden Nine and Silver Ten" period, although steel demand recovered somewhat, it was not as expected, and overall it was still lower than the steel consumption level in the second quarter. He predicts that the steel market will "have foresight and no worries" in the future. "Foresight" mainly refers to the fact that high stocks will become the norm in the steel market, which may bring certain risks to market operation and price stabilization; "no immediate worries" mainly refers to the current financial abundance, and it is expected that there will be no major financial problems in the market this year .

Xu Xiangchun predicts that my country's steel demand will increase by 2% in 2020; crude steel output is expected to reach 1.03 billion tons; steel exports will reach 53 million tons, down 22% year-on-year; steel imports will reach 30 million tons, up 95% year-on-year; iron ore Stone imports will reach 1.15 billion tons, a year-on-year increase of 7.4%.

Guo Miao, an analyst at Shanghai Ganglian E-commerce Company, said that steel prices fluctuated greatly in the first half of this year, and fluctuated generally in the second half of the year, with small fluctuations. She said that due to the small regional price difference in the current market, which results in poor resource liquidity, the rebar output in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region has always been lower than the level of the same period last year.

Such as Zhu Zhenxin, executive president of the Institute of Financial Research, said that my country’s manufacturing demand is currently improving; infrastructure investment continues to pick up, bringing room for growth in steel demand.

Wu Bin, head of the black industry chain of Green Dahua Futures Company, shared a typical case of steel companies using iron ore futures and steel futures to hedge and avoid risks. He suggested that steel trading companies should also reasonably participate in the steel futures market, combine futures and spot, to avoid risks, reduce financial costs, expand business volume, and avoid large fluctuations in performance.