Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
February 18, 2015
I was relieved to see the Sentiment 3MMA trend break after dropping for almost five straight months (since mid-September). I am not quite yet ready to say we have vanquished any growing pessimism within the flat rolled steel industry. But, breaking the streak was the first step.
I have a number of concerns. The continuation of huge amounts of foreign steel imports is a worry. It just means it will be that much longer before inventories are stabilized at the service centers. I spoke with the owner of a mid-sized service center this morning and he told me he was concerned about the amount of inventory he was holding for some of his contract customers. He is not worried as the inventory is all committed but, when prices drop as fast as they have, you have got to start to wonder if some of your tons are being supplanted by spot tons out of a mill or another service center. If that is not what is happening, then the higher inventories are due to changing demand at that particular customer. That may actually be an even larger concern to this service center.
I thought one of the comments made by a manufacturing company is telling to what I think will begin to happen (or is happening now). Foreign imports which are arriving now are more expensive than what can be bought on the spot market. This event may help lower the number of foreign tons being bought for late second quarter arrival. We also found this to be true in our survey results (Premium level members should be able to access our Power Point online sometime on Friday morning).
Spot zinc pricing continues to float right around $0.95 per pound on the LME. This is very close to where zinc was trading at the beginning of 2014 prior to the new coating extras being announced later in the summer. However, at the same time zinc inventory levels have been plummeting and are now at 590,000 metric tons (LME warehouses) down from last year’s peak level of close to 840,000 metric tons. For those of you buying coated products zinc spot pricing and inventories are items you want to keep an eye on. We use www.kitco.com for our data (under base metals).
For our Premium level customers, we will have the survey results in the website by sometime on Friday morning. You will be able to access the power point presentation when logged into the website. The survey results are found under the Analysis tab.
We will have a Premium supplemental issue out sometime on Friday as well with two special analysis of service center inventories and, 1) How we did on last month’s forecast (mixed) and what we are forecasting for the next few months and why.
There are two cyclones (hurricanes) about to hit Australia. We wrote about the storms in our blog yesterday. A couple of years ago we saw a huge swing in metallurgical coal prices into China due to damage caused by a cyclone hitting Australia.
Today (Thursday) was the beginning of the Chinese New Year. Last year was the year of the horse. This year is the year of the “horned animal” which I have seen referenced as a goat, sheep and ram (Google had its search engine depicting a ram). Sheep, it seems, are not desirable animals as they are considered docile or followers rather than leaders. Anyway, the country is essentially on Holiday for the next week or so.
A reminder to our existing members, we continue to offer rewards to those companies who recommend new SMU newsletter customers. We are offering a $100 credit for each new member referred. The credit will be good for one year and can be used on any workshop, conference, upgrade or renewal during that time period. If you have any questions please feel free to contact us at: info@SteelMarketUpdate.com.
As always your business (and that of those you recommend join us) is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, Publisher
John Packard
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