Steel Products

Final Thoughts

March 6, 2013

The CME Group announced it had record volumes for its NYMEX U.S. Midwest Hot-Rolled Coil Steel Index futures (HRC) and options (HRO). During the month of February HRC futures recorded 6,619 contracts eclipsing the previous record set in January 2012 of 6,214 contracts. At the same time HRO (options) contracts which have only been available for a much shorter time than HRC futures – traded 1,350 contracts, surpassing the previous monthly high of 1,000 set in August 2012.

If you would like to learn more about the HRC and HRO (along with the BUS – which is ferrous scrap futures using AMM Midwest #1 Busheling) derivatives markets. How to use the products – and not use the products – Steel Market Update and Andre Marshall, CEO of Crunch Risk, LLC along with the CME Group will be holding a Managing Price Risk workshop at the NYMEX in New York City on Friday, April 26, 2013. Information about the program and registration for the workshop is on our website: www.SteelMarketUpdate.com in the Events section (just click on the banner at the top when the workshop pops up).

For those of you attending the Platts/SBB scrap and North American Steel conference in Chicago next week – Andre Marshall will be speaking at the conference. Jack Marshall, who works with Andre and Steel Market Update, will also be in attendance. Take a moment to look them up and to learn more about our upcoming workshop (or more about SMU).

Our SMU steel market survey will continue until noon on Thursday as we strive to gather the most data as possible. We will send a reminder email at 9 AM ET (6 AM PT) on Wednesday. If you haven’t seen your invite and have done our survey previously – check your junk mail to make sure the email is not getting caught up in your SPAM filters.

If you would like to be added to our survey invite list please send me an email: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com and I can review what our requirements are with you (harmless and confidential).

A note about social media – I personally am most active on LinkedIn and I have a LinkedIn steel group which is conveniently called: Steel Market Update. If you are a LinkedIn member (which is free) you are welcome to link with me personally as well as with my group. I monitor the content and don’t allow advertising, steel offers and other distractions. We currently have a little more than 1,100 followers in the group.

Sophia and Sandy keep up our Twitter and Facebook accounts. We also have a blog on our website which is also kept pretty active. We are posting some of the articles which do not make it into the newsletter on the blog so you may want to check it from time to time. Our goal in the new website is to have a public and private blog so we can relay information to our members quickly (such as price increases) and privately without telling the whole world right away what is happening.

I appreciate your feedback and can be reached at John@SteelMarketUpdate.com or by phone at 800-432-3475.

As always your business is truly appreciated.