Steel rebound hope fading as China's property market slows

Home prices have shown signs of slowing following Beijing's orders to tighten the market

Steelmakers aren’t out of the woods yet. A year-long resurgence risks fading as a slowdown in China’s property market deepens, exposing bullish sentiment as overblown, according to a US-based hedge fund manager and former Citigroup analyst.

“China’s real estate sector is the biggest X-factor for the steel market globally this year,” Ivan Szpakowski, chief investment officer at Academia Capital LLC, said in a phone interview from North Carolina last week. “We’ve clearly turned the corner into a downward phase of the property cycle, and I do think there is a real risk for steel that we go back toward where we