This report summarizes total steel supply from 2003 through January 2017 and year on year changes. It then compares domestic mill shipments and total supply to the market. It quantifies market direction by product and enables a side by side comparison of the degree to which imports have absorbed demand. Sources are the American Iron […]
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the February employment data on Friday which was a week later than normal. This was the best result for goods producing industries (mainly construction and manufacturing) since August 1998. The preliminary result for net job creation in February was 235,000. December was revised down by 2,000 and January […]
Licensed data for February was reported by the Steel Import Monitoring System of the US Commerce Department on March 7th. An explanation of the methodology that we at SMU use to analyze the trade data is given at the end of this piece. All volumes in this analysis are reported in short tons. Total rolled […]
The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) introduced a new data set for GDP by state and region in 2014 and backdated it to Q1 2005. This week the data was updated through Q3 2016. Even though we might consider this to be historically “old,” we think it’s worth reporting because it is a foundation for […]
We are continuing our investigation to quantify the players in the global steel trade of both hot rolled coil (HRC) and cold rolled coil (CRC). In our first report published in February we provided an overview for both products. Later last month we published a report describing the major players in the export and import […]
January data for Construction Put in Place (CPIP) was released by the Department of Commerce on Wednesday March 1st 2017. This was not such a great report. Total construction is still growing though more slowly. State and local construction are contracting. The contraction is not seasonal as we are considering year/year comparisons. At SMU we […]
We at Steel Market Update (SMU) have been upbeat on the steel market for many weeks. We thought sharing our Key Market Indicators (KMI) with our readers would help everyone to understand our reading on the market and from where we get our core optimism. An explanation of the Key Indicators concept is given at […]
An explanation of the Key Indicators concept is given at the end of this piece for those readers who are unfamiliar with it. This will explain the difference between our view of the present situation which is subjective and our analysis of trends which is based on the latest facts available. During February our view […]
Once each quarter we publish the official statistics for Chinese GDP, industrial production, consumer price inflation and fixed asset investment. Currently available GDP data is through the fourth quarter, other data included here is through December or January. Many analysts don’t believe these Party self-serving figures but we include them in our reports because of […]
The source of this data is the Conference Board with analysis by Steel Market Update. Please see the end of this piece for an explanation of the indicator. The February report made up the January decline and then some, the three month moving average (3MMA) has improved for nine consecutive months and was the strongest […]
This report summarized seven data sources that describe the state of manufacturing in the US. We have reported on most of these separately in our Steel Market Update publications therefore will be brief in this summary. We don’t expect these data sources to all point in the same direction but our intention in summarizing them […]
Please see the end of this report for an explanation of data sources. The Broad Index value of the US $ is reported several days in arrears by the Federal Reserve, the latest value published was dated February 17th (Figure 1). The dollar had a recent peak of 128.963 on January 3rd which was the […]
The Global steel industry is on a roll with the y/y growth in the three month moving average (3MMA) of production increasing from negative 5.5 percent in January last year to positive 6.0 percent in January this year. Production in the month of January was 136,514,000 metric tons with a capacity utilization of 69.2 percent. […]
In January US light vehicle sales fell to 17.6 million units from 18.4 million in December on a seasonally adjusted annual basis. The decline was almost entirely in the car sector as shown in Figure 1. Even though sales declined they were still a bit stronger than expected. Drivers are (no pun intended) employment gains […]
January service center shipments were exceptional. There are times when we wish we weren’t so hung up on three month moving averages and this is one of them. Daily shipments increased by 29.9 percent from December. Since 2009 on average, January has increased 8.1 percent hence our enthusiasm for the latest data. Carbon steel shipments […]
This report summarizes total steel supply from 2003 through December 2016 and year on year changes. It then compares domestic mill shipments and total supply to the market. It quantifies market direction by product and enables a side by side comparison of the degree to which imports have absorbed demand. Sources are the American Iron […]
This is the second in a series of new reports on global trade of hot rolled and cold rolled products. In the future these articles (the first one was published on Tuesday, February 14th) will be part of our Premium level products and will be published in our Premium supplemental newsletter. If you would like […]
We believe that miss-information (or lack of) about regional import volumes is often used to influence purchase decisions. Our intent with this analysis of tonnage by district of entry is to describe in detail what is going on in a company’s immediate neighborhood and thus provide a negotiating advantage for our premium subscribers. We are […]
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the January employment data on Friday and introduced five years of revisions. In January the preliminary result for net job creation was 227,000. November was revised down by 40,000 and December revised up by 1,000. Using a three month moving average (3MMA), the result for January was 183,000 up […]
The prices of oil and natural gas drive the consumption of oil country tubular goods (OCTG) and related steel products. The energy markets represent a large portion of the hot rolled coil used to make welded tubular goods as well as equipment used to drill and pump oil and natural gas. Figure 1 shows historical […]
We believe that to understand the forces acting on the US steel import market it is necessary to examine global trade flows. We present here episode one of our investigation into the global trade of hot rolled coil and cold rolled coil and the US’s position in the big picture. The source of this data […]
Licensed data for January was reported by the Steel Import Monitoring System of the US Commerce Department on January 7th. An explanation of the methodology that we at SMU use to analyze the trade data is given at the end of this piece. All volumes in this analysis are reported in short tons. Total rolled […]
An explanation of the Key Indicators concept is given at the end of this piece for those readers who are unfamiliar with it. This will explain the difference between our view of the present situation which is subjective and our analysis of trends which is based on the latest facts available. Looking back from the […]
December data for Construction Put in Place (CPIP) was released by the Department of Commerce on Wednesday February 1st 2017. We reported last month that $305 billion infrastructure to the bill that Congress passed in December 2015 might be beginning to kick in and this perception was strengthened in the December data. At SMU we […]
The source of this data is the Conference Board with analysis by Steel Market Update. Please see the end of this piece for an explanation of the indicator. The January report indicated a small decline from December but the three month moving average (3MMA) was the strongest since August 2001. Consumer confidence is the driver […]
December service center daily shipments declined by 13.1 percent from November, a non event because since 2009 on average December has declined by 13.2 percent. Carbon steel shipments decreased by 369,100 tons, the number of shipping days was unchanged at 21, and tons per day (t/d) shipments decreased by 17,600 tons. Inventories at 6,754,200 tons […]
Please see the end of this report for an explanation of data sources. The Broad Index value of the US $ is reported several days in arrears by the Federal Reserve, the latest value published was dated January 20th (Figure 1). The dollar had a recent peak of 128.9627 on January 3rd which was the […]
Global steel production in 2016 was up by 0.9 percent after declining by 3.4 percent in 2015. On a rolling 12 month basis, December was the first month to have positive growth since May 2015. Production in the month of December was 134,059,000 metric tons with a capacity utilization of 68.6 percent. The three month […]
The headline report of GDP growth in Q4 came in at 1.88 percent a decline from 3.53 percent in the third quarter. GDP is measured and reported in chained 2009 dollars and in the first estimate of Q4 was $16.805 trillion. The growth calculation is misleading because it takes the quarter over quarter change and […]
Total light vehicle (LV) auto production in NAFTA in December was at an annual rate, of 15.171 million units, down from 17.921 million in November. In cases where seasonality is more than a weather effect, we like to compare the monthly result with the monthly norm over a number of years. On average since 2004, […]