Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
October 1, 2014
One item I keep hearing from the service centers I speak with – and it doesn’t matter what the product is – hot rolled, galvanized, Galvalume I am hearing the same thing. Business is good, in some cases excellent, but margins are being squeezed. Competition appears to be willing to move off inventory for whatever reason and at whatever price. As one large service center put it, “The competition has lost price discipline.”
We had one service center in the Houston area tell us that they are worried about all of the cheap steel sitting at the port and more coming in. They reported inbound Russian hot rolled in the $580-$585 range CIF, Duty Paid, Port of Houston. Deliveries at that price level are coming through the remainder of the year. The new price offers on Russian HR into Houston are $610 per ton but we don’t believe there will be many buyers at that price with domestic HR numbers sliding at this moment.
Our next survey will begin first thing on Monday morning. If you would like to be added to our invitation list please shoot me an email: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com
Our Steel 101 team will be in Fort Wayne, Indiana as we conduct our next workshop in conjunction with Steel Dynamics. A special thank you to SDI for working with SMU and being supportive of our educational efforts.
The next Steel 101 will be in the Charleston, South Carolina area and will include a tour of the Nucor Berkeley steel mill. We thank Nucor as well for their support. This will be the second Nucor mill we will have worked with since we began offering our Steel 101: Introduction to Steelmaking & Market Fundamentals workshops.
You can find out more details about our Steel 101 and other workshops on our website.
As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, Publisher

John Packard
Read more from John PackardLatest in Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts
Who could’ve guessed that the first stage to follow liberation would be confusion. Well, when things get this liberated this fast, perhaps it’s to be expected. From the 30,000-foot view, “Liberation Day” didn’t have a significant impact on steel tariff-wise. That is, the Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs stand alone from the reciprocal tariffs […]

Final Thoughts
The market breathlessly awaits the arrival of President Trump's "Liberation Day."

Final Thoughts
I’m not sure what I can write today that won’t be old news after April 2. The Trump administration has dubbed Wednesday “Liberation Day.” Since it’s mostly about tariffs, let’s just call it “Tariff Day.” Or maybe we should call it “Tariff Week” – since tariffs typically dominate the news cycle in the first week […]

Final Thoughts
A personal perspective on Galvalume prices from SMU analyst Brett Linton.

Final Thoughts
After a March frenzy, are prices nearing a peak in April? Some of you have suggested that they are. Others think it's too early to make any such call.