Final Thoughts

As mentioned in an earlier article, steel buyers need to be aware of the potential for a new round of price increase announcements out of the domestic mills. The drop in scrap prices in the first few days of February followed by a sharp rise between now and then have the mills a bit on edge. They now believe scrap prices could jump again in March which would put pressure on their margins. Whether any new price increase will stick is another question entirely. We have a couple of new players looking for hot rolled orders and cold rolled and coated trial orders (Big River Steel and Acero Junction).

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