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CONKLING KOPCIKECONOMICS
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Energy, Utilities & Critical Minerals

Iron Ore — Monthly Price

The monthly price of iron ore delivered to China, the world's largest buyer, from the World Bank's Pink Sheet.

Data status: Current
Official statisticSource figures as of October 16, 2026Sources & methods
Sources
World Bank
Period covered
Jan 1960 – Sep 2026
Source figures as of
October 16, 2026
Geography
World (benchmark market price)
Sector
Energy, Utilities & Critical Minerals
Seasonal adjustment
Not seasonally adjusted
Transformations
Views other than the level (changes, averages, volatility) are calculated by CK Economics from these figures. The constant-dollar view divides by the BLS consumer price index (CPI-U)
Revisions
Replaced with the source’s latest figures whenever it revises them.
Data status
Current
Limitations
Seasonal swings are left in: compare a period with the same period a year earlier.

Full method · Research standards

No projectionIn backtests at 40 past dates, a statistical projection (exponential smoothing, damped trend) was not clearly better than a no-change forecast: its errors over the next 3 months were 2% larger, short of the 5% improvement needed, so none is shown. How we decide

Key figures

CK estimateUS$ per dry metric ton · calculated by CK Economics from World Bank data

Latest · Sep 2026
97.7
−5.4% vs a year earlier1
5-year change
−21.5%
since Sep 2021, −4.7% a year2
10-year change
+69.0%
since Sep 2016, +5.4% a year2
Record high
214.4
Jun 20213
Record low
8.8
Jan 1968 (and 11 other periods)3
Where the latest ranks
82nd pct.
Higher than 82% of the other 800 observations since Jan 19604
  1. 1Latest observation against the observation one year earlier (for weekly data, the nearest within three days).
  2. 2Latest observation against the observation five and ten years earlier; the yearly rate is the compound annual growth rate over the span.
  3. 3Highest and lowest published observations across the full history shown.
  4. 4Share of the other published observations that are lower than the latest one, rounded down.

Seasonal pattern

CK estimate

Each month of 2026 and 2025 against the average and range of the same month in 2021–2025. Calculated by CK Economics from the published series.

Monthly US$ per dry metric ton in 2026 and 2025 compared with the 2021–2025 average and range
2026 2025 2021–2025 average 2021–2025 range

Methodology

Iron ore fines of any origin, 62% iron, spot price delivered to China (cost and freight, c.f.r.) from December 2008; 63.5% iron from 2006 to November 2008. Earlier years are annual contract prices for Brazilian ore sold to Europe, so the series is not one market throughout. Underlying sources: Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters Datastream and the World Bank. The World Bank's Pink Sheet reports monthly average prices in nominal US dollars, not adjusted for inflation (the chart's constant-dollar option can adjust them). The World Bank compiles them from the market sources it names for each commodity and updates the workbook early each month; recent months can be revised. The World Bank publishes the data under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The series runs from January 1960. Projection: none. CK Economics backtests a statistical projection of this series (exponential smoothing with a damped trend) by refitting it at past dates and scoring its forecasts against what happened. Its errors over the next three months were not at least 5% smaller than those of the better of a no-change forecast and repeating the same month a year earlier, so no projection is shown.

How we collect, check and project every dataset →

Source

World Bank, Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet), monthly prices, "Iron ore, cfr spot": https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets — figures as published on 16 October 2026.

All data

801 observations, newest first · US$ per dry metric ton

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PeriodValueChange y/y
Sep 202697.7−5.4%
Aug 202696.3−3.4%
Jul 202698.2+0.9%
Jun 2026100.8+9.2%
May 2026108.6+12.0%
Apr 2026106.1+9.2%
Mar 2026104.5+4.4%
Feb 202698.8−6.0%
Jan 2026105.5+5.9%
Dec 2025104.6+2.3%
Nov 2025102.5+2.0%
Oct 2025103.5+2.1%
Sep 2025103.3+11.3%
Aug 202599.7−0.2%
Jul 202597.3−9.0%
Jun 202592.3−14.1%
May 202597−18.4%
Apr 202597.2−13.8%
Mar 2025100.1−8.8%
Feb 2025105.1−15.5%
Jan 202599.6−26.7%
Dec 2024102.2−25.5%
Nov 2024100.5−23.3%
Oct 2024101.4−14.8%

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