Flat rolled steel prices continued to erode this past week based on SMU analysis of the CRU, Platts and SteelBenchmarker steel indices for the week ending October 24, 2014. Hot rolled prices now average $645 per ton, down $3 per ton from the prior week. If you remove SteelBenchmarker from the average, since they did […]
Total September steel imports were just shy 3.9 million net tons according to the Preliminary Census numbers just released by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Total steel imports were up 5.2 percent over August data, and up 38.0 percent year over year. Semi-finished imports (mostly slabs) were up 6.3 percent month over month and 47.3 […]
As one of our scrap sources out on the East Coast put it on Friday, talk within scrap circles is very negative for November and the market is poised for another move lower. “Domestic demand for November scrap seems lackluster and export demand at this point – I think everyone knows the story there – […]
Buyers and sellers of flat rolled steel are advising Steel Market Update that the domestic steel mills are receptive to negotiating prices on all products. Based on the most recent SMU flat rolled steel market survey results, 94 percent of the respondents reported the mills as willing to discuss hot rolled pricing. This is up […]
Steel Market Update is hearing the rumors about the potential for a new flat rolled steel price increase. The rumors are mostly coming from the service center and financial community. But, our readers, if paying attention, should not be surprised by the rumors and the real possibility that the mills will attempt to cut their […]
The following article comes from one of our contributing writers, Andre Marshall of Crunch Risk, LLC. Andre is a well known trader/broker in the hot rolled coil (HRC) and other commodities futures markets. He is also our instructor for the SMU Managing Price Risk I and II workshop series. Tonight Andre speaks to the financial […]
Steel Dynamics admitted in their conference call with analysts earlier today, that the timing is not right for a trade case against cold rolled and coated steels (the question asked was about Chinese the answer did not reference any specific country). We thought our readers would be interested in the complete dialogue between two of […]
Based on the analysis of the responses we received so far this week on our survey coupled with channel checks we found flat rolled steel prices slipped on cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume while remaining the same on hot rolled. We found that it is too early to see if the termination of the Russian […]
Everyone is aware of the high level of flat rolled imports in 2014 – especially cold rolled and coated products. So, where does 2014 rank on a historical basis? It is on pace to be the third highest year on record. We have 8 months of actual import data on the books. August year-to-date flat […]
The following is our October analysis of the flat rolled and OCTG imports based on license data through October 21, 2014. As we have mentioned many times, license data is not exact and many times can lead one to over or under project final steel import numbers. We have seen license data for the first […]
Production in September on a tons per day basis was 4.481 million tonnes, up from 4.342 in August. This was the third month since February when production was <4.5 million tons per day. For the month of September production was 134.421 million tonnes down from 135.167 in August. This was a seasonal effect, due to […]
For the week ending October 18th, 2014, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) estimated that the U.S. steel industry produced 1,822,000 net tons (NT) of raw steel, a 1.0 percent increase over the previous week but a 0.5 percent decrease over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 75.7 […]
For the week ending October 25th, 2014, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) estimated that the U.S. steel industry produced 1,835,000 net tons (NT) of raw steel, a 0.7 percent increase over the previous week and a 0.2 percent decrease over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 76.3 […]
Figure 1 shows historical gas and oil prices since January 2000. The daily spot price of West Texas Intermediate fell below $100 in August and by October 14th was down to $81.72, the latest daily figure available from the Energy Information Administration, (EIA.) Brent closed at $86.36 on the same day. The EIA has calculated […]
On Friday, Steel Market Update adjusted our hot rolled coil price range from $630-$670 per ton to $620-$660 per ton. This action was taken after multiple buyers from across the country produced information regarding numerous mills taking aggressive positions for new hot rolled orders. We mentioned in our Thursday evening newsletter that we were considering […]
US pipe producers filed dumping and countervailing duty petitions on Line Pipe against producers in Korea and Turkey, alleging dumping margins of 16 percent against Turkey and from 58 percent to 221 percent against Korea (the alleged CVD margins are not known or not published at this time). This comes relatively shortly after the trade case […]
On Friday, Steel Market Update adjusted our hot rolled coil price range to $620-$660 per ton and our average was adjusted to $640 per ton. All of the other indexes also moved lower on hot rolled coil and the average of the four steel price indexes moved lower by $8 per ton to $647 per […]
The market believed that consolidation of the steel mills would result in a much more disciplined industry, especially regarding flat rolled steel prices. Larger steel mills and fewer players would mean less negotiating and better control of production facilities. That is what the market wanted to believe. However, it is not easy for a leopard […]
After the recent sell off of HRC futures, it appears the market has reached a critical support level with Cal 15 trading at $620. Near months aren’t much higher with Nov14 trading around $623 and Dec14 at $621. The selloff came as concerns over the global economy came to light in recent weeks. The International […]
The following is a “hypothetical” calculation of the spread between world hot rolled export prices and domestic (USA & Canada) hot rolled prices. Actual HRC price spreads can vary based on freight costs, trader margins and other factors. SMU compares the world hot rolled export price with adders for freight, handling, trader margin, etc., against […]
Although we heard from a number of buyers mixed messages regarding the spot markets. Some buyers are seeing the market as continuing to weaken while others feel the mills have dug in their heals and prices are firm (at least in their region of the country). We have heard rumors of one, or more, mills […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) is changing the way we look at the import license data. As we have mentioned on numerous occasions, the steel import license data can only provide an idea as to how imports are shaping up for the current month. The licenses received have been tending to surge at the beginning of […]
Cliffs Natural Resources will begin using trucks to transport taconite pellets to the docks from its Minnesota facility due to rail congestion in the upper Midwest. In an announcement on Friday, the company said it will immediately begin utilizing 100 trucks per day to ship iron ore pellets from Hibbing Taconite to the Duluth-Superior harbor […]
For the week ending October 11, 2014, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) estimated that the U.S. steel industry produced 1,804,000 net tons (NT) of raw steel, a 1.2 percent decrease over the previous week and a 1.5 percent decrease over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 75.0 […]
Ferrous scrap prices for October delivery into the domestic steel mills have so far this month declined by $10 to $20 per gross ton. Prices vary based on geographical region and product but our sources in Chicago advised us that their prices fell by $20 per gross ton on all products. We received the following […]
Steel Market Update provides a comparison of a handful of flat rolled steel indices to not only check prices but also look for changes in price momentum. The four indexes reviewed are: CRU, Platts, SteelBenchmarker and our own SMU index. Hot rolled prices dropped again this past week as all of the reporting indexes were […]
Steel Market Update recently published an article about the beginning of the 2015 non-automotive flat rolled steel price negotiations between end users, service centers and the domestic steel mills. We continue to gather information regarding the status and tone of the negotiations and we are learning that 2015 will be much different than what transpired […]
Following the post-recession recovery, shipments of hot rolled steel from US mills to domestic locations have been trending in a range for three years. Shipments of hot dipped galvanized sheet and strip declined strongly in Q2 through Q4 2012 and have climbed slightly in 2014. Cold rolled shipments have shown little direction for almost two […]
Licensed data for September was updated on October 3rd through the Steel Import Monitoring System of the US Commerce Department. The SMU publishes several import reports ranging from this very early look using licensed data to the very detailed analysis of final volumes by district of entry and source nation which is published in our […]
2015 annual contract negotiations have begun, according to both manufacturers and service center steel buyers. The next month or two should be quite interesting as the process continues. Early reports are suggesting that the domestic steel mills may be more “flexible” in their flat rolled steel price negotiations than they were at this point in […]