In my last ditty, I mentioned we were likely headed to the 1775-1800 area on the S&P 500. Well yesterday we reached 1775. However, the Fed statement from their October meeting yesterday had just enough language changes from the September meeting that some felt nervous and got out of some of their positions and the […]
Based on recently released data from the U.S. Department of Commerce, exports of steel rose slightly during the month of August to 1,147,411 net tons (all products). This represents an increase of 60,102 tons compared to the exports shipped during the month of July which totaled 1,087,309 tons. August exports of hot rolled totaled 86,065 […]
The rumor mill is in high gear as being fanned by the various steel industry periodicals. In the most recent edition of breaking industry news Steel Business Briefing and Platts McGraw Hill Financial reported a U.S. mill as being ready to suspend price talks if a deal is announced for ThyssenKrupp Steel USA. The article […]
Flat rolled steel prices continued to rise over this past week. With the exception of Galvalume all of our averages increased by $5 per ton compared to this time last week. The domestic mills continue to be quite firm in their pricing stance and negotiations are limited (but not impossible). The market expects another round […]
The 3 month moving average (3MMA) of imports of the combined tonnage of billets, blooms and slabs through September reached the highest level since February last year. We use the 3MMA to avoid getting too wrapped up in a single months numbers which can be a fruitless exercise. On the same basis flat rolled products […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce released final August import numbers late last week. August steel imports rose by 368,606 net tons to 2,878,367 net tons due to higher slab, OCTG, cold rolled and hot-dipped galvanized imports. Slab imports were up by 140,252 tons over the prior month to 657,659 tons total. However, this was expected […]
Both these data points are reported in the Federal Reserve G17 data base. The Industrial Production (IP) index was reported as 100.04 for September, up by 5.7 percent from the 99.47 result in August. This was the first month >100 since February 2008. The three month moving average (3MMA) increased by 2.5 percent year over […]
For the week ending October 26, 2013, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) reported that the U.S. steel industry produced 1,817,000 net tons of raw steel, a 1.0 percent decrease over the previous week but a 7.4 increase over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 75.8 percent, down […]
Just about all of the steel indices monitored by Steel Market Update have benchmark hot rolled coil at, or very close to, $660 per ton ($33.00/cwt) as of this past week. Prices have risen by approximately $5 to $10 per ton during the week. The short term trend is for prices to remain firm and […]
Our ferrous scrap sources are advising Steel Market Update to expect a minimum of $20 per gross ton increase in scrap prices as we head into the month of November mill buys. We are finding there is some weakness being exhibited on the east coast with the Claymont plate mill being shut down by Evraz, […]
According to Baker Hughes data from October 25th, 2013, the U.S rig count for this week is 1,738 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This count is a decrease of 1 rig when compared to last week, with oil rigs down 4 to 1,357 rigs, gas rigs up 4 to 376 rigs, […]
The American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) reported their final raw steel production numbers for the month of September 2013. This estimation is different than the weekly raw steel production as it is based on 75 percent of the domestic mills reporting vs. 50 percent for the weekly estimates. Total raw steel production for the […]
TSI Iron Ore: Market Soften As Rebar Slides Iron ore prices have been fairly volatile over the past week as conflicting data and information coming out of China as moved the needle in opposite directions. The upshot to all of this intraday volatility is that prices remain fairly unchanged on a week-on-week basis. With rebar […]
The recent strength in the physical market has sent futures prices up over the past month. This week, however, prices have begun to soften as most market participants feel the market has reached a top. Talk of revived imports coming in as well as some domestic mills offering deals a bit below published prices has […]
The combination of higher spot prices and adjustments to contract negotiations has caused some buyers of flat rolled steel to seek alternatives to their normal domestic source of supply. Steel Market Update is beginning to get confirmations from both manufacturing companies and service centers of larger foreign tonnage purchases being made for 1st and early […]
The domestic steel mills continued to put pressure on spot market pricing which resulted in another small increase in our flat rolled price assessments for this week. We continue to hear from buyers that prices are only somewhat negotiable ($10-$30 per ton off of the price announcement levels). This is somewhat of a change from […]
During our HARDI steel conference call held earlier today (see article above) one of the wholesalers asked the question how many times have we seen galvanized base prices at, or above, $40.00/cwt? We thought it was a legitimate question and was one we could easily answer using our own galvanized base price indices. So, SMU […]
For the week ending October 19, 2013, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) reported that the U.S. steel industry produced 1,835,000 net tons of raw steel, a 0.6 percent decrease over the previous week but a 8.5 increase over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 76.6 percent, down […]
The domestic mills pushing for customers to switch to Platts indices may shudder when they realize that Platts benchmark hot rolled coil index is the lowest of the five followed by Steel Market Update.Even so, all of the indices are now within $6 per ton of each other. The average price for hot rolled, using […]
According to Baker Hughes data from October 18th, 2013, the U.S rig count for this week is 1,739 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This count is a decrease of 4 rigs when compared to last week, with oil rigs down 6 to 1,361 rigs, gas rigs up 3 to 372 rigs, […]
Financial Markets: Okay now that that mess is over with, the S+P 500 and other U.S markets can get back to the business of what they do best – Go Up! In fact we, have already reached all time highs (again) today with the S+P 500 at 1733. As I noted, we are likely headed […]
One of the questions posed to the approximately 600 companies invited to participate in our mid-October flat rolled steel survey was if they believed if any or all of the announced flat rolled price increases would be collected by November 1st. A large majority of almost two-thirds – 64.8 percent – responded that at least […]
The following information was in a press release received by SMU from CRU. We have requested more information from CRU regarding the audit, how it has impacted their data providers and any other pertinent information they were able to gather through the process. We will follow up with another article when we receive information from […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) is seeing prices beginning to rise on all flat rolled products. With a couple minor exceptions mostly contained to the South, we have been seeing a united front and mills are telling SMU that they have been able to collect most, if not all, of the price increases announced. We continue […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) has been doing some quick channel checks to see what offers are available out there for foreign steel. Our steel market survey, which we began on Monday morning of this week, has been suggesting a higher level of interest in foreign steel due to the higher domestic prices and the spread […]
For the week ending October 12, 2013, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) reported that the U.S. steel industry produced 1,847,000 net tons of raw steel, a 1.4 percent decrease over the previous week but a 9.2 increase over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 77.1 percent, down […]
According to Baker Hughes data from October 11th, 2013, the U.S rig count for this week is 1,743 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This count is a decrease of 13 rigs when compared to last week, with oil rigs down 5 to 1,367 rigs, gas rigs down 9 to 369 rigs, […]
There was little to no change with most of the indices this past week. What might have been the most noteworthy is Steel Orbis is no longer the lowest priced on benchmark hot rolled. Also of note is Platts is no longer the highest priced index for HRC. Will this be the week when prices […]
Shipping in the Capesize Market is beginning to slow down after a strong September driven by iron ore restocking in China and exports of ore from Brazil. According to the MID-SHIP Report on Oct. 10, average Capesize earnings fell to $33,368 from $42,211 two weeks ago. Time charters averaged $30,000 prompting owners to turnover cargo […]
There is a lot going on regarding contracts, contract negotiations and the timing of when orders/commitments need to be placed with the domestic steel mills. SMU has had direct conversations and seen email correspondence which suggests at least one of the integrated steel mills is pushing for remaining 2013 tonnage to be placed right away […]