Ferrous scrap prices continue to weaken due to sluggish demand at the domestic steel mills coupled with a lack of exports off the East Coast USA to Turkey. Turkish scrap prices have tumbled over the past thirty days, down $46 per ton or nearly 20 percent compared to last month. An 80/20 HMS mix is […]
The following press release came out late this afternoon and we caught it early this evening. The announcement is about the hot rolled trade cases and whether the US International Trade Commission (ITC) found enough evidence to determine that the probability exists that the U.S. steel industry was “materially damaged” by hot rolled exports from […]
Flat rolled steel buyers reported a weakening flat rolled steel market this week. Large buyers are now able to buy spot hot rolled at $410-$420 per ton with medium sized buyers seeing prices closer to $420-$440 per ton. We are seeing cold rolled and coated products as doing a little better as they have been […]
Last week we reported on a change in the cold rolled antidumping/countervailing duty scope language that has created some concern within the manufacturing community. The concern is related to changes which resulted in this being added to the scope language: “Subject merchandise includes cold-rolled steel that has been further processed in a third country, including […]
Steel Market Update participates in a monthly steel conference call with HARDI wholesalers who supply galvanized sheet and coil products to the HVAC mechanical contractors across the United States and Canada. The wholesalers also supply other products such as air conditioners, furnaces and many other products to companies working on residential, multi-family and commercial construction […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce released new foreign steel import license data this afternoon that suggests imports for the month of September may not be below 3.0 million tons after all. At this moment, using data through today and projecting the rate to remain the same for the balance of the month, September would come […]
We finally got our Flat Rolled Steel Service Center Apparent Excess/Deficit Inventory forecast model back on track. As we mentioned last month, SMU had been operating under a much more optimistic frame of mind and this past month we pulled back on our expectations and by doing so we came very close to nailing both […]
Demand (or the lack thereof) seems to be the real culprit affecting the steel market and prices at this moment. I spoke with one of the larger service centers this afternoon and asked: would imports be reduced enough to impact U.S. supply and trigger a price spike? I asked what were the chances that the […]
Flat rolled and plate prices continued to slip as all of the indexes followed by Steel Market Update reported pricing this week. The CPI benchmark hot rolled average dropped $2 to end the week at $446 per ton ($22.30/cwt). We now have SMU with the lowest average at $440 per ton followed by Platts ($445), […]
As we have mentioned in a recent article, there has been an intentional change in the scope language associated with the cold rolled and hot rolled antidumping and countervailing duty suits. The change in the language appears to add parts that are not part of Chapter 72 of the Harmonized Code (iron and steel). Of […]
The Metal Service Center Institute (MSCI) released August distributor shipment and inventory data on Wednesday of this week. Total steel inventories remained essentially unchanged in August compared to July as the daily shipping rate declined by 3.8 percent. The biggest declines in shipments were attributed to carbon plate (-14.8 percent), structurals (-3.9 percent) and carbon […]
Once one of the largest corporate giants in the United States (if not the world), United States Steel (USS) continues to shrink its workforce as demand for its products shrink. SMU has learned that an unknown number of white collar workers have been advised that they will be losing their jobs. USS Spokesperson Courtney Boone […]
It appears that very slowly steel buyers are slowly starting to come to a realization that there may be a lockout at US Steel and possibly ArcelorMittal as well. As many of you know, these two mills are not huge players in the spot markets so the immediate impact may be slightly muted should one […]
The key word that we are hearing from steel buyers and mills alike is the market is QUIET, very, very quiet. Lead times referenced continue to be short. Inventories continue to be high. We did not collect any huge changes in our key product averages. We are hearing that extras on many products are being […]
The legalese can be brain numbing when reviewing the documents involved with the various steel trade suits. However, large manufacturing companies have their attorneys go through the petitions and review the specific language in order to recognize when changes are made in order to protect themselves from surprises. If your company has not done so […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce released the latest license data for the month of September through the 15th of September late this afternoon. For the first time in many months we are seeing a large change in the license requests at this point in the month. Earlier this month it appeared that licenses were trending […]
I am currently involved in selling our family home now that my kids are gone and we no longer need a large house. The process of dealing with listing agents and real estate sales people has sparked a number of articles about customers service and understanding who the customer really is within our newsletter/website. The […]
SMU has been canvassing secondary flat rolled steel service centers and brokers around the United States to see how the secondary markets are faring in the current market conditions. We had an extended conversation with a Chicago based distributor who told us that the current market is all about “staying power.” What this executive meant […]
The flat rolled steel indexes followed by Steel Market Update saw prices as being relatively flat this past week with the exception of Platts which is playing catch-up as they move their prices to be more in line with the other indexes. SMU kept all of our indices the same as the prior week as […]
My opinion (and many of the items discussed in my Final Thoughts articles are just that – my opinion) is that we are getting close to seeing a disruption of services at one mill and we probably are close to possibly seeing two mills (ArcelorMittal and US Steel) lockout the USW members at their mills. […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce (US DOC) released final July Census Data which means they have announced the final steel import numbers for the month. Total steel imports for the month of July 2015 were 3,285,600 net tons (SMU converts the USDOC metric ton data into net tons for our readers). The July totals were […]
Sentiment amongst most steel buyers is that the mills (USS & ArcelorMittal USA) will not lockout the union workers. It appears there is a bit of a stalemate right now as the mills feel they need to get something from the union and the union workers believe that what they have they earned and cannot […]
SMU adjusted our flat rolled price indices on Thursday of last week due to information we gathered after the conclusion of our Steel Summit Conference. We noted then that the market has been very slowly leaking, with the bottom of our hot rolled range hitting $420 per ton. One of the mills with which we […]
SMU is seeing ferrous scrap prices in the Chicago area trading down $10-$15 per gross ton with HMS at $200-$210 per gross ton, shredded at $230-$235 per gross ton and busheling at $240-$245 per gross ton. We received a note from one of our main ferrous scrap sources late last week that we thought would […]
Due to the Labor Day Holiday in the United States, Steel Market Update did not produce our Comparison Price Indices article on Sunday evening. Since many of our readers look forward to this information we are publishing last week’s numbers this evening. Hot rolled coil was dropped below $450 per ton on two indexes – […]
Last week Steel Market Update conducted our early September flat rolled steel market analysis. One of the areas we watch very closely is how are distributors handling spot flat rolled steel purchase prices to their manufacturing customers? We have found that as service center spot prices weaken, so do mill prices until they reach the […]
I continue to receive positive comments regarding last week’s Steel Summit Conference. What is especially gratifying is the number of speakers who have come back with comments as to how much they enjoyed the conference, the quality of the speakers and the interest of the attendees. Many of our speakers stayed for the entire conference, […]
Earlier this week, Steel Market Update hosted our 5th Steel Summit Conference. We had a record crowd in attendance tipping the scales at close to 300 people. We had 26 speakers over the course of the two day conference (including Peter Wright and John Packard of SMU) and, from our perspective, the longer term forecast […]
Buyers and sellers of flat rolled steel continue to remain optimistic about their company’s ability to be successful in the current market conditions. However, we have seen a weakening of that position especially when we look at the numbers based on a 3-month moving average. The SMU Steel Buyers Sentiment Index measures how flat rolled […]
After leaving our Steel Summit Conference, SMU began canvassing our flat rolled steel sources to see if there had been any further changes in prices of flat rolled steels (hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume). We found three of the items dropped (hot rolled, cold rolled and galvanized) while Galvalume rose slightly. Here is […]