The current downward cycle is getting a little “long in the tooth” (old) and there are signs that even with the short lead times and excessive inventories at the service centers the domestic steel mills are not chasing business but rather negotiating for specific pieces of business with known tonnages and want dates. The mills […]
This morning Steel Market Update (SMU) participated in the monthly galvanized steel conference call hosted by HARDI. The conference call is for those HARDI wholesalers who sell galvanized sheet and coil to the HVAC mechanical contractors around the United States and Canada. Since the last conference call held during the later days in February, galvanized […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce released Preliminary Census data for February 2015 foreign steel imports into the United States. Based on the latest release imports for the month of February, 3,583,566 net tons were imported (note: the US DOC releases the data in metric tons and SMU converts to net tons for our readers). Foreign […]
March imports are trending toward another very large month. We expect that when the final numbers are released, the month will come in about 3.6 to 3.8 million net tons which would be in line with our 12 month moving average of 3.7 million net tons. Last March imports were 3.2 million net tons. Note […]
Last week a number of the large Chinese steel mills who have offices in the United States met to discuss the pressures being placed on the Chinese mills by both the Chinese central government and the U.S. government to control (reduce) the amount of steel being exported to the United States. SMU heard over the […]
One of the most import keys being watched by buyers and sellers of flat rolled steel are the steel mill lead times on hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume products. Lead times, which are the amount of time it takes to get material produced once a purchase order is placed, have been running “short” […]
Based on the results from our most recent flat rolled steel market analysis which we conducted this past week, manufacturing companies and service centers reported domestic (USA and Canada) steel mills as willing to negotiate pricing on hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume steel coils. As you can see by the graphic shared below, […]
Last week Steel Market Update (SMU) conducted our mid-March flat rolled steel market survey. We invited approximately 600 companies to link to our questionnaire which covers a number of issues of importance for the industry. Last week’s industry participants consisted of 49 percent manufacturing companies, 37 percent service centers, 8 percent trading companies, 3 percent […]
This weeks Comparison Price Indices analysis saw flat rolled steel prices as continuing their 8 month slide. Benchmark hot rolled coil (or bands) moved Lower by an average of $7 per ton this past week. Of the four steel indexes followed by Steel Market Update (including our own) the spread from low (SMU at $470) […]
We thought we would take one last stab at the subject of Anti-Dumping (AD) and Countervailing Duties (CVD) since we received more detailed information from attorney Lewis Leibowitz: The question of time lines for AD/CVD cases can fill many pages. There are rules, exceptions and discretion (mostly Commerce) that can alter the time lines. Your […]
I want to take a moment to welcome our newest members to Steel Market Update. I want to remind all of our members that we encourage comments, questions and suggestions. Many of our best articles are done in response to questions being asked of us by the active steel community. We find if one person […]
Those involved in the flat rolled steel industry continue to be optimistic about their company’s ability to be successful both in the current market environment as well as three to six months into the future. The SMU Steel Buyers Sentiment Index (current market) is being reported at +53. This is four points higher than two […]
Steel Market Update has learned that the U.S. government has sent a letter to the Chinese central government regarding the exports of steel out of the Chinese mills and the harmful impact those exports are having on the U.S. steel industry. We are learning that the Chinese government has advised the Chinese steel mills of […]
As we ended the last article about the possibility of Anti-Dumping (AD) or Countervailing Duty (CVD) trade cases against flat rolled steel (cold rolled, galvanized and possibly Galvalume) in Tuesday evening’s issue we presented a number of questions posed by one of our readers. He wanted to know: I have a timeline question for you […]
Not to toot our own horn too loudly, we came within a whisker of nailing both shipments and inventories in our last Service Center Inventory Apparent Excess/Deficit forecast. In our last forecast we indicated flat rolled shipments would be 2,253,000 tons and based on the MSCI data released earlier this week the actual number was […]
Any of you out there feeling like the beat of the anti-import drums are once again beating harder and harder. So, what happens if the Chinese steel mills decide to “voluntarily” reduce or allocate their export tonnage to the United States? First, would they try to allocate at existing tonnage levels (which are quite high) […]
The quick slide to the bottom slowed over the last 7 days with cold rolled and Galvalume steel prices unchanged, galvanized is down $5 per ton and hot rolled is down $10 per ton compared to last Tuesday evening. Hot rolled is now within the range predicted by Timna Tanners of Bank of America Merrill […]
According to data just released by the Metal Service Center Institute (MSCI), U.S. service centers shipped 3,332,300 tons of all steel products during the month of February 2015. The daily shipment rate was 166,600 tons per day, down 1.4 percent over February 2014 when the daily shipment rate was 169,000 tons. In comparison to the […]
Every week the US Department of Commerce (US DOC) releases steel import license data for those months that have not had Preliminary Census or Final Census data announced. The latest license data was released this afternoon (Tuesday) covering the month of March through today (March 17, 2015). Steel Market Update (SMU) takes the license data […]
I want to shout out to all of the people who worked on tonight’s newsletter as this has been a particularly hectic day for me due to my travel schedule. Brett Linton and Sandy Williams both did great jobs (as usual) as they bounced from subject to subject and article to article. Peter Wright continues […]
Flat rolled steel prices plummeted again this past week according to the steel indexes followed by Steel Market Update. All four indexes reported pricing this week. The range from low to high on benchmark hot rolled coil was $480 to $495 per ton with SMU at the low end of the range and SteelBenchmarker at […]
We will begin a new flat rolled steel market analysis (survey) on Monday morning at 8 AM ET. There are lots of questions which are unanswered and we want to probe your thoughts on the subject. As I mentioned, invites to the survey will be sent out at 8 AM ET. If you receive an […]
As Steel Market Update has discussed in previous articles on the subject of scrap pricing, the original projections by buyers of scrap were for prices to drop $20 per gross ton on all products for the month of March. The projected March reduction would have been on the heels of an $80 to $110 per […]
I thought I would wait for my Final Thoughts area of the newsletter before broaching the rumor mill which has been begun questioning at what point do the domestic steel mills go out into the market and announce price increases. I had a number of conversations over the past few days with both consumers of […]
Last week the pace of the decline in flat rolled steel prices was relatively modest, most being in the single digits and in some cases there was no decline in our averages at all. There was some talk about “the bottom” of the market around the industry but, the inventory over-hang was just there and […]
There seemed to be three subjects on the minds of the steel buyers and executives with whom Steel Market Update spoke with over the past twenty-four hours: steel prices, demand for steel products and foreign steel (both offers and threats of dumping suits). Since it is Tuesday and we publish our flat rolled steel price […]
I reproduced part of an article written by David Phelps about the fling of an anti-dumping trade case, what the mills have to prove and how the system works. The original article was written back in July 2014 and the exact same subject, with the exact same products and same cast of characters, exists today. […]
When it comes to the laws of supply and demand within the steel industry, many steel executives in their quarterly conference calls will reference steel service center inventories. As you look at the graphic below you can clearly see the trend change as steel service center inventories began to balloon in 4th Quarter 2014 and […]
Over the past month we have begun to ask a new question of those responding to our flat rolled steel questionnaire. With the excessive inventories at service centers, and potentially some end users, created (in part) by high levels of imports, SMU wanted to know when we might see imports start to taper off. This […]
The pace of the drop in flat rolled steel prices slowed this past week. From our perspective, we saw hot rolled prices as down $5 per ton, cold rolled and galvanized as flat and Galvalume up $5 per ton compared to the previous week. All of the reporting steel indexes (SMU, CRU & Platts) followed […]