Steel Market Update is seeing prices as being modestly higher than they were both two weeks ago as well as last week. On average, cold rolled and coated steels have the most strength with lead times on many of these products having extended into February (and some coated into March) at most of the mills […]
Scrap dealers are optimistic that ferrous scrap prices have bottomed in all regions of the country and will rise as we move into negotiations for the month of January. A rising scrap market is a harbinger of good things for the steel mills as they attempt to collect the increases already announced and perhaps add […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce released import license data through the 22nd of December. The data continues to show the trend to be similar to that of November when approximately 2.7 million net tons of foreign steel were exported to the United States. In the graphic below we have highlighted hot rolled (trending lower), cold […]
For the week ending December 19, 2015, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) estimated the U.S. steel industry produced 1,523,000 net tons of raw steel, a 0.8 percent decrease over the previous week and a 15.2 percent decrease over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 63.7 percent, down […]
The following article is normally produced for our Premium level members, but we wanted to share it with our Executive level members as we think it is important and interesting as the world is flooded with excess steel capacity. If you find this article interesting you may be interested in upgrading your membership from Executive […]
We are at the point of the turn and watching how quickly each index reports the change. From Steel Market Update’s view, we saw all flat rolled products pricing rising this past week and we expect most, if not all, of the price increase announcements made to be collected by the domestic steel mills and […]
The following calculation is used by Steel Market Update to identify the spread between world hot rolled export prices as determined by SteelBenchmarker and domestic (US) hot rolled prices as published by SMU. Steel Market Update compares the world hot rolled export price to which dollars are added for freight, handling, trader margin, etc. The number […]
On July 28, 2015 the U.S. steel mills filed antidumping and countervailing duty trade suits on cold rolled steels against China, Brazil, Russia, India and Korea. Of the countries named, China was by far the largest exporter of cold rolled steel to the United States and the country with the biggest target on its back. […]
The following article is written by Spencer Johnson of FC Stone LLC. With six years of experience, Spencer provides his customers strategic and tactical advice on protecting themselves against commodity price volatility in the steel markets. Spencer will rotate weekly futures articles with Andre Marshall of Crunch Risk, LLC. Spencer can be reached at spencer.johnson@intlfcstone.com. […]
Late Tuesday afternoon the U.S. Department of Commerce released updated import license data for December. Based on the data through the first 15 days of the month it appears December imports will be very similar to November. We remind our readers that license data this early in the month should be taken with a grain […]
When Steel Market Update (SMU) reviews pricing we take a number of items into account. We look at the transaction prices that buyers report to us as having been made within the past few days. We look at the offers to sell being made by the mills as well as the offers to buy being […]
SMU was advised over the weekend that Nucor had raised spot plate pricing by $30 per ton. On Monday, SSAB followed the Nucor lead by providing a letter to their customers advising them, “Please be advised that effective immediately SSAB Americas is raising the transaction price for all non-contract As-Rolled Mill Plate, Cut-To-Length Plate >72”, […]
The following article is one that is produced for our Premium level members once we release the latest Imports by Product, Port & Country data into our website. In this article we want to give you a little feel for the data. Once you start reviewing imports by port you can begin to ask questions […]
According to the latest data released from the US Department of Commerce and the American Iron and Steel Institute, apparent steel supply for the month of October 2015 was 8,868,427 net tons. Apparent steel supply is calculated by adding domestic steel shipments and finished US steel imports and subtracting total US steel exports. October supply […]
For the week ending December 12, 2015, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) estimated the U.S. steel industry produced 1,536,000 net tons of raw steel, a 1.1 percent decrease over the previous week and a 14.4 percent decrease over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 64.2 percent, down […]
This report is a detailed drill down into imports of hot band through October, beginning with the big picture and ending with exactly what came into a region of significance to your business and where it came from. SMU has developed a series of reports that cover hot rolled, cold rolled, HDG, other metallic coated […]
On Friday Nucor and ArcelorMittal USA followed the lead of NLMK USA, Northstar Bluescope and AK Steel by announcing steel price increases on hot rolled, cold rolled and galvanized coated steels. Nucor sent a letter to their customers advising them that base prices on new orders would increase by a minimum of $40 per ton […]
We are already seeing some signs of the “turn” as the flat rolled steel indexes followed by Steel Market Update saw very little movement this past week. Both SMU and Platts saw hot rolled pricing as stable while CRU was down $5 per ton (SteelBenchmarker did not report prices this past week). Our average was […]
Two domestic mills made price moves on Wednesday as NLMK USA and then AK Steel came out with price increases on flat rolled steel. The NLMK announcement did not reference specific base price levels while the AK Steel announcement did. NLMK USA was the first to announce, which they did in an letter to their […]
The rumblings of a price increase have been building for a couple of weeks now as mills like SDI (Butler) and Nucor (Berkeley) have been quietly asking for higher steel prices from their customers prior to any announcements being made. On Tuesday we traded emails with a service center executive who told us, “While rumblings […]
The following article on the hot rolled coil (HRC), busheling scrap (BUS), iron ore and financial futures markets was written by Andre Marshall, CEO of Crunch Risk LLC and our Managing Price Risk I & II instructor. Here is how Andre saw trading over the past week: Financial Markets: The stock market is taking a […]
In the first ten months of this year bulk scrap exports were 10,889,000 tonnes for an annual rate of 14,519,000 tonnes, down by 15.6 percent from the first ten months of last year. The tonnages shown in Figure 1 are based on three month moving averages (3MMA) for 2015 and on the annual monthly average […]
As the domestic mills announce price increases in the hopes of changing market momentum, one of the negatives is the spot price of iron ore in China (the largest seaborne ore buyer). Iron ore prices have been collapsing for the past two years with 62% Fe fines reaching $37.5/dmt today (TSI data). As you can […]
The USW met with workers at Cliffs Natural Resources in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to discuss warnings by the company of potential increases in health care premiums for retirees. A letter sent to retired workers by Cliffs in November contained rate increases that the USW believes to be incorrectly calculated. The union has not been able […]
The service centers with whom we communicated over the past few days are talking about the “whispers” of a possible price increase announcement. A number have told SMU that mills like SDI Butler and Nucor Berkeley are asking for higher spot prices than what was available two weeks ago. A service center executive told us, […]
For the week ending December 5, 2015, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) estimated the U.S. steel industry produced 1,553,000 net tons of raw steel, a 4.4 percent increase over the previous week but a 14.3 percent decrease over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 65.0 percent, up […]
Licensed data for November was reported by the Steel Import Monitoring System of the US Commerce Department on December 4th. At SMU we perform a detailed analysis of this data, an explanation of our methodology is given at the end of this write up. Total rolled product licensed imports in the single month of November […]
Late Tuesday afternoon the U.S. Department of Commerce released updated import license data for November and on Friday of this past week they also released Final Census data for the month of October. The final October number was just over 3.0 million net tons while the license data for November appears will be 400,000 less […]
Chinese exported 101.7 million metric tons, or 112 million short tons, of steel in the first 11 months of 2015, according to customs data reported by Bloomberg. Exports increased by 22 percent year over year, almost as much as the total annual capacity of U.S. steel mills of 120 million tons. As China’s economic slowdown […]
Ferrous scrap prices are one of the key indicators to watch as the market determines if we have reached the bottom in the slide in flat rolled prices and, if prices will rebound from here. The thought process has been that a move higher in scrap will help change the psychology of the market and […]