What determines the price of power coal?

In the past two months, the power coal in the Bohai Sea harbor has oscillated, and the pit price fluctuates back and forth, but it is stronger than the coal price in the harbor. What determines the price of power coal? Today think tanks believe that pits are mainly affected by costs and supply and demand, while ports are mainly affected by costs, policies, supply and demand and expectations. 

Before the structural reform of the supply side, when the coal price is lower than the mining cost, the cost support is weak, mainly because the supply and demand determine the coal price. With the reduction of coal production capacity and the improvement of the situation of oversupply of coal, pithead power coal not only quickly rises to more than cost, but also the gross profit of many power coal mines in the past two years is above 80%, and the fluctuation of price is mainly affected by supply and demand. And the way the owner of coal mine judges supply and demand is very simple. If there are more cars to pull coal, the price will rise, and if there are fewer cars to pull coal, the price will fall. Because of the coal shortage in the past two years, when the coal-pulling trucks are more often, there are even several price rises a day. The formation mechanism of port coal price is more complex, and it is mainly affected by cost, policy, supply and demand and expectation. The cost of port coal price mainly includes two aspects: coal cost and logistics cost. In recent two years, if pit price and logistics price are simply added together, the price is often inverted. The specific reason is affected by policy, supply and demand and market expectations.

Policy is mainly about the regulation of the price of power coal by the state. The direct reason for the regulation is that the state limits the price of power by region. If the price of coal is not regulated, it will affect the national economy and people's livelihood. Therefore, we can see the situation is that cement, chemical industry, building materials and other non-electric coal market-oriented degree is higher, while the market-oriented degree of electric coal is relatively low, when the coal price runs out of control, the state even directly limits the price of electric coal. The forming factors of supply and demand and market expectation are also complicated. In pithead, coal mine owners may only look at the number of coal-pulling vehicles, but the port can not only look at anchorage ships, but also related to port inventory, downstream inventory and imported coal and other factors. Market expectations are also very complex, influenced by seasonal factors, emergencies and national policies. In terms of the current market, think tanks today believe that due to macro-control and high inventory in the downstream, price differentiation between ports and pits will continue, and port coal prices will also show a weak oscillation situation, pit-mouth traders will be better than port traders, non-electricity traders will be better than electricity coal trade.