Cleveland Cliffs Inc (CLF)

[sts66]

CC transcript contains a great explanation of why APIO fetches lower prices and why IO continues to stack up in ports:

Turning to APIO. The discounts for iron content and quality adjustments that we saw in the first quarter came in even more negative in Q2. While Cliffs only produces 11 million metric tons per year in Australia, and we only sell to blast furnace operators Fortescue, BHP and Rio Tinto combined sell several million of tons of sinter feed fines to middlemen, to traders, every month. That explains the ever-increasing port inventories in China, another self-inflicted wound by the Australian majors to themselves.

First, BHP and the other Australian miners sell iron ores to traders, to the middlemen. Then the traders actively portside the material that they acquired from the miners. Then the traders borrow more money from the Chinese banks to acquire even more iron ore from their 3 enablers, actually, 4, as we should include the smaller one, Roy Hill. Then their only customers for these traders to sell their iron ore sitting at the ports are the blast furnace operators, the very same ones that would otherwise buy iron ore directly from the miners. How smart is that? While we continue to see Rio Tinto and Vale clearly behaving better and are hopeful that BHP will get religion soon, we keep alternative plans for our APIO, just in case conditions happen to worsen.

Wow, I kept reading into the Q&A section, and LG actually goes after HFT algobots and sends a "read between the lines" message to Barron's and Axiom:

Novid, it's important that you clarify these things. Because you know these days, there's big agencies, Associated Press, Reuters. When they read the press release, the computers read the press release, and they print the line by line, the bullets. And after that, it becomes the only reality. So it's important that people of that -- it's not artificial intelligence, it's natural intelligence. Because artificial intelligence so far is more like a natural ignorance. So I need natural intelligence to process the things and then come up with something that makes sense. Remember, we have a bunch of guys out there that they make a living just screwing up companies. So if you allow these guys to continue to make a living, these guys will continue to screw up companies forever. And these guys belong to jail. I'm working with one right now. So anyway, just do your homework, Gambardella and Brett Levy and Jeremy Sussman and Evan Kurtz and Seth Rosenfeld and Lucas Pipes and Jeremy Sussman, Phil Gibbs, these guys that have a brain. Let these other idiots to die with no money and probably, if the SEC does their job, behind bars. But, go ahead, Tim, please.