DALIAN/MANILA, May 04 (Reuters): China plans to open more of its futures contracts to foreign investors, a senior official said on Friday, as Beijing launched its "internationalised" iron ore contract, part of a bid to boost its sway over pricing of major commodity imports.
Global merchants Glencore and Trafigura were among the first foreign firms to trade iron ore on Friday, although they have long had access to the contract through local entities. The change means foreign companies will be able to trade directly, opening the market to more participants.
Iron ore is the second commodity China has opened to outside investors following the launching of a crude oil futures contract in March that aims to compete with rival global benchmarks.
The move is expected to increase trading in the Dalian Commodity Exchange's iron ore contract, which was launched in 2013 and is already among China's most liquid derivatives, with volumes far surpassing shipments of global seaborne iron ore trade.
"We will accelerate the process to attract more foreign investors," Fang Xinghai, vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, told a packed crowd at the trading floor of the Dalian exchange.
"We will internationalise all the mature futures contracts and expand Chinese influence," he said.
The most actively traded September iron ore contract DCIOcv1 closed down 1.2 per cent at 471.50 yuan ($74) a tonne, retreating from a two-day spike that pushed it to a more than one-week high on Thursday.
Volume for the most-traded contract reached almost 2.9 million lots, just surpassing April's daily average of 2.8 million lots.
The strong liquidity in China's markets is a strength in its bid to be a price setter. Trading volumes in its crude oil futures ISCc1 have outpaced turnover on the rival Brent LCOc1 and the US West Texas Intermediate CLc1 contracts during Asian hours since its March 26 launch.
But the huge volumes also make China's iron ore contract a magnet for speculative retail investors, who have triggered wild price swings and prompted regulators to impose trading curbs over the past two years.
Unlike oil, gold and copper, for which prices are set in London and New York, iron ore is one of the few commodities whose global pricing takes its cue from China.
Prices there virtually dictate the path for the physical market. In 2017, Dalian iron ore volumes reached nearly 33 billion tonnes versus global annual iron ore trade of about 1.5 billion tonnes.
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