Kumba Iron Ore stuck out a trading update on Friday afternoon, of course with sliding iron ore prices their earnings were always going to be much lower than the period before. The Rand of course has been somewhat of a cushion, for these numbers of course. For the first half, headline earnings were 16 percent lower to 6.5 billion Rand, for the full year they are anticipated to be 10.61 to 11.41 billion Rand, in other words 4.1 to 4.9 billion Rand, lower than the first half by quite some margin. Results for the full year are anticipated to be around the 10th of February, there was some brief respite in terms of the falling iron ore price, the price has trended lower (like most commodity prices), stabilising somewhat after five straight months of downward direction. We are more or less at the same commodity price on iron ore today than the middle of 2009. Remembering that the iron ore price was flat for nearly 30 years, from the early 1980's all the way through to 2003. It was then that something changed, the Chinese demand exploded. Governments (who then taxed more) did nothing, it was all the demand from a new customer, where their government changed everything.