One week ago, ArcelorMittal circulated their price increase announcement and in their internal memo the company raised the issue of, “The market manipulation and discounting of the CRU has had a dampening effect on industry spot prices.” AM then went on to raise prices by $45 per ton but did so by taking the benchmark […]
Steel Market Update likes to review the transcripts of the earnings conference calls between analysts and the steel mills to see what we can glean from the comments being made by the top executives at the mills. We found a number of items of interest in the U.S. Steel conference call. USS Running at 90% […]
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 third 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 […]
This will most likely be the last time Steel Market Update will use the table below. We will begin rolling out some new products in the coming days which are meant to replace and improve upon what we have been providing our members to date. We will go into more details on the changes soon. […]
Our Steel 101: Introduction to Steelmaking & Market Fundamentals Workshop is quickly filling up. We have about 6 spots left available for our February 27-28 workshop which will be held in the Columbus, Mississippi area and include a tour of the Severstal Columbus mini-mill. You can learn more about our program on our website or […]
As if the south is not already flooded with flat rolled steel mills, Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe and Big River Steel CEO John Correnti announced earlier today that if the bonds are approved by the Arkansas legislature a new $1 billion steel mill will be built in Arkansas. Details were lacking regarding the type of […]
The American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) reported their estimated raw steel production data for the week ending January 26, 2013. According to AISI estimates the U.S. steel industry produced 1,806,000 net tons of raw steel last week. This represents a decrease of 1.0 percent compared to the week earlier and is 5.8 percent lower […]
Mid-Atlantic Projected Higher – Midwest Sideways to Slightly Lower The February scrap markets are beginning to take shape and our sources are advising SMU that the negativity which existed one or two weeks ago may be waning. Indications are now for a rising market in the east and a sideways market (with a chance for […]
As we made our rounds over the past few days we found a number of the smaller mills who had not yet announced price increases and were continuing to collect orders at the previous prices. We also found a few instances of larger mills continuing to collect prices at the lower end of our scale […]
On Thursday I attended the American Institute for International Steel (AIIS) West Coast Dinner in Long Beach, California. Many thanks to David Phelps, president of the AIIS and his West Coast team who did a great job with the dinner and the program. A couple of quick notes to share with our readers, Marcel Van […]
According to Baker Hughes data from January 25th, 2013, the U.S rig count for this week is 1,753 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This number represents an increase of 4 rigs from last week. Compared to last year the 1,753 count is a decrease of 255 rigs. Canadian rigs increased by […]
This week, the SMU Fair Value HRC (hot rolled coil) Model has spot HRC pricing below Fair Value for the second week in a row after nine consecutive weeks of higher HRC prices. This is due to the SMU average spot HRC index decreasing $10 per ton to $610 per ton and scrap inputs remaining […]
With the exception of Steel Orbis (which if you haven’t noticed tends to take few positions on a weekly basis) and SteelBenchmarker who did not produce new numbers this past week, CRU and SMU both dropped HRC price assessments by double digits by the middle of the week. By the end of the week, Platts […]
Based on the most recent data released by the Department of Commerce projects 2012 total steel imports to be 33,347,611 net tons – this represents an increase of just shy 17 percent versus the 28,515,247 net tons imported into the U.S. during 2011. Galvanized tonnage was up by 36 percent, Galvalume by 22 percent, cold […]
December Imports Down 15% Imports dropped by 377,746 net tons compared to the prior month. On a day’s adjusted basis December imports were 15 percent lower than November. Based on preliminary license data January imports are projected to be approximately 2.9 million net tons – well above both the 3-month and 12-month moving average. Semi-finished […]
A quick reminder that our Steel 101 workshop registration is open – details about our program, our instructors, and the tour of Severstal Columbus which is part of the program and discount details for SMU member companies are on our website: www.SteelMarketUpdate.com – or you are welcome to contact our office with any questions you […]
Based on our survey results from this past week, SMU found service center inventories have declined slightly from where they were at the beginning of January. Each service center is treated equally in our survey – we do not weigh the survey due to size. As of last week our average was 2.29 months worth […]
The issue of excessive discounting against CRU and other index-based issues raised by ArcelorMittal in their price increase announcement are ones which Steel Market Update has been researching and which we began raising in our last steel market survey. During conversations with service centers, steel mills and end users we were catching frustrations with the […]
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 second 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 […]
Written by: Andre Marshall, Crunchrisk Financial Markets The last of the obstacles to an improving economy, the debt ceiling and the spending cuts etc seem to be rolling over. The Republicans have cleverly put in a temporary debt ceiling increase covering us until May which will be after the budget talks in April and the […]
U.S. Steel verbally began telling their U.S. customers of their intention of raising spot flat rolled prices by $50 per ton. Price increase letters were sent to their customers by Nucor and NLMK USA as they advised their customers of their intention of raising flat rolled spot prices by a minimum of $50 per ton. […]
ArcelorMittal raised flat rolled spot prices on Wednesday and in the process took a shot at the rest of the industry (and perhaps themselves?) when they identified, “The market manipulation and discounting of the CRU has had a dampening effect on industry spot prices.” They then used the most recent index benchmark plus $45 to […]
AK Steel came out with a price announcement – no surprises here. We knew they were positioning themselves to announce. The big question will be with earnings season upon us will the other mills take up the call for increases – or be satisfied with the status quo. The betting money is on the […]
The American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) reported their estimated raw steel production data for the week ending January 19, 2013. According to AISI estimates the U.S. steel industry produced 1,824,000 net tons of raw steel last week. This represents an increase of 0.3 percent compared to the week earlier but is 4.9 percent lower […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) participates in a monthly conference call with HARDI wholesalers who sell galvanized sheet and coil into the HVAC mechanical contractors and related industries for residential and commercial construction applications. The purpose of the call is to discuss steel trends which may impact their regional businesses – this includes domestic mill and […]
An overwhelmingly majority of manufacturers reported service center spot prices as “stable” according to the results of our survey conducted this past week. A full 85 percent of those manufacturing respondents taking our mid-January survey reported no change in spot prices from their service center suppliers. This is an increase of 18 percent compared to […]
As was reported over the past week, Steel Market Update found a number of buyers of varying sizes able to purchase hot rolled coil below $600 in the spot market. We did not find every mill or every region participating in the erosion of the bottom end of our range. What we found is the […]
As Steel Market Update (SMU) checked with various market sources after the AK Steel price announcement we found most of the industry expecting the other domestic steel mills to follow the AK Steel pricing lead. At the same time, most buyers expect the net result to be an end to the current slide in pricing […]
On Monday, January 23rd, AK Steel announced a price increase on all flat rolled steel products of $40 per ton ($2.00/cwt). The price increase is for “spot” orders only and is “effective immediately” according to the press release issued by the company. This is the first price announcement so far during the 2013 calendar year. […]