Contributor: John Packard

The following table is of the Chinese trade data for the month of February 2013. Tonnage shown is in thousands of metric tons.  

Based on the results from our steel survey conducted this past week, service center inventories dropped to 2.09 months and have been declining over the past couple of months. Steel Market Update does not weigh larger service center results any differently than smaller service centers. We defer to the MSCI data as being more complete. […]

According to the results of our most recent steel market survey, 62 percent reported “some” of the increase (less than 50% of the increase amount) has been collected. Another 5 percent reported “most” of the increase as being collect (more than 50% of the announced amount) while 33 percent reported “none” of the announced increase […]

We had a mixed bag this past week as the CRU indices went higher while SMU and Platts moved lower. Stuck in the middle was Steel Orbis which didn’t do anything and SteelBenchmarker which did not report new numbers last week. The benchmark hot rolled index is in a fairly tight range from $610 (SMU/Steel […]

Manufacturing companies continue to report negligible support for higher spot prices by the distribution segment of the flat rolled industry. In our most recent survey, the vast majority of manufacturing companies reported their service center suppliers as providing stable spot prices (75 percent). Only 7 percent were reporting higher spot prices and those reporting lower […]

Steel Market Update (SMU) conducted our mid-March steel survey this past week. We invited 682 people representing approximately 650 different companies to participate in our survey. Of those responding 49 percent were manufacturing companies, 39 percent were service centers/wholesalers and the balance were trading companies (5 percent), steel mills (4 percent), toll processors (4 percent) […]

On a personal note I want to wish Joel Mazur much success in his new position as President of CENTRIA. For those of you who do not know this, Joel Mazur was president of Winner Steel while I was still an agent for the steel mill (Winner Steel is now called Sharon Coatings and is […]

According to SMU sources combined with an article written by Jose Manuel Saavedra & Ivo Ribeiro we have discovered that CSN has not yet made a firm proposal on the assets of ThyssenKrupp Steel Americas steel mills. The Brazilian article reported that CSN is requesting an extension of time in order to conclude their negotiations […]

Washington, D.C. – March 20, 2013 – With increasing demand for design services, the Architecture Billings Index (ABI) is continuing to strengthen. As a leading economic indicator of construction activity, the ABI reflects the approximate nine to twelve month lag time between architecture billings and construction spending. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) reported the […]

SMU was following up on an article we did earlier this week regarding service center spot sales to other warehouses/dealers during our survey process. We wanted to go out to a larger audience and see what kind of impact distributors were seeing in their sales to other distributors. What we found through our survey is […]

Written by Brad Clark, Director of Steel Trading, Kataman Metals Last week’s $15 drop down the forward curve has done little to spark new trading interest as prices have bounced a touch off the lows around $620. We are now stuck around the $625 range for the balance of 2013. With the spot indices hovering […]

Based on the results from the Steel Market Update (SMU) steel survey which began on Monday and concluded earlier today, the SMU Steel Buyers Sentiment Index remained mildly optimistic and was measured at +17. This is a 2 point improvement over the +15 reported at the beginning of March. The +17 recorded for the middle […]

It has been a hectic past few days due to my travel schedule – which happened to include a drive from Montreal to Albany, New York in the middle of a snow storm. It has been more than 30 years since I lived in Minnesota…but, the lessons learned those many years ago came in handy […]

The American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) reported their estimated raw steel production data for the week ending March 16, 2013. According to AISI estimates the U.S. steel industry produced 1,785,000 net tons of raw steel last week. This represents a decrease of 2.4 percent compared to the week earlier and is 9.9 percent lower […]

Lead times continue to be quite short on all but Galvalume. Hot rolled lead times retreated to —- weeks based on the results from our ongoing SMU steel survey. Cold rolled and galvanized lead times remained relatively stable compared to the beginning of the month. According to our survey responders, mills are more willing to […]

The domestic steel mills continue to struggle to keep the flat rolled steel averages (indices) above benchmark levels. Hot rolled coil, which according to our index rose during the previous two weeks to $615 per ton (average), is now struggling to hold its gains. Other flat rolled items are having their issues and this was […]

Steel Market Update will begin our mid-March steel survey on Monday morning. Invitations will be sent out at approximately 8 AM ET. If you receive an invitation please spend a few moments to click on the link – which will take you to SurveyMonkey.com – to complete our survey. Your opinions are valuable to our […]

According to Baker Hughes data from March 15th, 2013, the U.S rig count for this week is 1,776 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This number represents an increase of 24 rigs from last week. Compared to last year the 1,776 count is a decrease of 208 rigs. Canadian rigs decreased by […]

Residential Storage Water Heaters U.S. shipments of residential gas storage water heaters for January 2013 increased 10.6 percent, to 363,004 units, up from 328,122 units shipped in January 2012. Residential electric storage water heater shipments increased 10.7 percent in January 2013, to 337,111 units, up from 304,529 units shipped in January 2012. Commercial Storage Water […]

This week, the SMU Fair Value HRC (hot rolled coil) Model has spot HRC pricing below Fair Value for the fifth consecutive week after briefly rising above the Fair Value price in the week of February 8th. This is due to the SMU average spot HRC index increasing $10 per ton last week to $615 […]

All of the indices followed by Steel Market Update had benchmark hot rolled above $600 per ton with all being above $610 per ton with the exception of the CRU.  With the exception of Platts – which has been higher than the other indices for a number of weeks recently – cold rolled could be […]

Steel Market Update (SMU) has been speaking to a number of service centers regarding their spot sales and especially those sales which are made between service centers or brokers. A number of service centers have been commenting about their spot warehouse business being off over the past three months. Lisa Goldenberg of Delaware Steel told […]

I appreciate all the kind comments we have been receiving over the past few weeks. It appears the addition of Sandy Williams and Peter Wright are net positives for Steel Market Update and I am pleased with the work both of them are doing for SMU. I received the following email from a large Midwest […]

The chart below is for prepainted flat rolled steel imports. What we like to do is to show the base bare substrate and then the prepainted item as separate line items. As with many of our reports, to take the “noise” out we show the 3-month and 12-month moving averages, the change compared to the […]

The U.S. Department of Commerce released ferrous scrap export data a little earlier this week. Total exports of scrap in January 2013 were 1,532,498 metric tons (1,689,288 net tons) to all countries. This is a little less than December shipments but above the January 2012 total. Below is a chart of the top 10 countries […]

Utilizing a trailing average hot rolled coil (HRC) price, the SMU Price MoMo Index for flat rolled steel in the U.S. remained below zero percent this week for the ninth week after eight consecutive weeks of positive momentum readings. MoMo is based upon the current hot rolled coil price weighed against the previous 12 week […]

The following article is from one of our close trading sources located in Asia. This person is actively trading iron ore and ferrous scrap into China and is also trading steel out of China into Europe. He is able to provide us a view of the Asian market not normally seen by outsiders. Here is […]

Written by: Andre Marshall, Crunchrisk LLC The S&P 500 market today was higher still up to 1563 on the index. As I mentioned our long awaited target was 1542, but as the all time high was 1572 it was hard to imagine that the market would just turn back and correct being only 30 points from […]

Our SMU Price Momentum Indicator continues to be at Neutral and has been for 14 weeks. We do not yet see enough momentum to cause prices to rise or fall quickly.  The market appears to be in a slightly over-supplied basis and demand – at the moment – is flat.  Not dead by any means, […]

The American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) reported their estimated raw steel production data for the week ending March 9, 2013. According to AISI estimates the U.S. steel industry produced 1,828,000 net tons of raw steel last week. This represents a decrease of 1.6 percent compared to the week earlier and is 7.8 percent lower […]