The plummeting iron ore price has wiped $A74 billion ($NZ74.9 billion) from the value of Australia's key iron ore mining stocks since January last year and analysts expect the share prices to continue their fall as the price for the commodity slides.
Craigs Investment Partners broker Chris Timms said investors who held on to the stocks while the price of iron ore sank during the past 15 months were now nursing losses in value as much as 92%.
Together, BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Fortescue Metals Group, Mount Gibson Iron, Atlas Iron, BC Iron, Arrium and Grange Resources suffered enormously as ore prices slumped 60% from $US134 ($NZ173.90) a tonne in January 2014 to $US51 a tonne, he said.
A combined $A73.7 billion, or 22% of value, had been erased from their market capitalisations since January 2, 2014.
Excluding the diversified big miners - BHP and Rio Tinto - the combined market value of the six remaining companies had fallen 71%, or $A17.2 billion.
A swath of analysts took a knife to their iron ore price forecasts last week and Goldman was among the most bearish, Mr Timms said.
The bank's analysts downgraded their price expectations for the next four years to as low as $US40 a tonne.
Citibank lowered its expectations for the rest of the year to $US37 a tonne and crunched its longer-term forecasts to $US40 a tonne.
''Citi analysts don't expect the price to average above that level [$US40 a tonne] until 2018.''
USB downgraded expectations to $US50 a tonne this year and $US48 a tonne next year, while credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's cut this year's forecast to $US45 a tonne.
BHP would release its third-quarter production report tomorrow.
Craigs was forecasting a 3.5% quarter-on-quarter decrease in Cu-Eq (copper equivalent) production, mostly due to an expected drop in copper production from mill down time, reduced metallurgical coal volumes due to wet weather in Queensland and longwall changes, and lower US onshore volumes reflecting field decline outside of the Black Hawk.
