The problem with coal’s spectacular rally this year is that it’s largely a Chinese political phenomenon, and what Chinese politicians give they can just as easily take away. Australian thermal coal spot cargoes at Newcastle port for November this week breached $100 a tonne for the first time in 4-1/2 years, closing on Tuesday at $102.20 and taking this year’s rally to almost 120 percent. There was much head-scratching this week at the annual World Coal Leaders conference in Lisbon over how virtually every analyst worldwide had misread the Chinese market, where imports have surged to 180.18 million tonnes in the first […]