On Tuesday, January 15th, Steel Market Update (SMU) began our second steel survey of the New Year. Our surveys are focused on the flat rolled steel market and are conducted by inviting slightly less than 700 companies who are asked to participate by invitation. Of those participating in last week’s survey 48 percent of the […]
Written by: Andre Marshall, Crunchrisk LLC Financial Markets On the equities markets we hit a new 5 year high reaching 1485 on SP 500 today. In this current rally you might recall our target point for this move is 1488 and so we may be near a point for a little retracement. If this current move […]
At the moment we have broken into two camps when it comes to hot rolled coil – the CRU and SteelBenchmarker (which did not report prices this past week) who both pegged their HRC prices in the mid-$630’s – and the rest of the indexes we follow on a regular basis and ourselves (SMU) who […]
Have tons to buy? Negotiate… What price you will pay for steel at the beginning of January will depend on a number of variables – but one thing is for certain – if you have tons to buy it is best to negotiate with your suppliers. At least that is what our sources have been […]
Platts may be providing a hint as to what we will see coming from the other indices as we enter a full week. SMU did see weakness in our steel survey but we have decided not to make any adjustments in our index until Tuesday evening since last week was 1) a short week and, […]
Financial Markets Who knew it was so easy, all the Republicans had to do was to agree to over $600 bln in tax increases, kick the can down the road on spending cuts by 2-3 months and voila!; No Fiscal Cliff! And with that the markets were off. The SP has gained 60 points in […]
Hot rolled coil average $655 per ton according to Steel Market Update (SMU) monthly average price assessments. SMU was $1 off the CRU ($656 per ton) monthly settlements against the CME HRC contract once all the numbers had been crunched. For those who are unaware, SMU publishes our indices on Tuesdays prior to the CRU […]
The month of December was best illustrated by the SMU Price Momentum Indicator which spent the entire month stuck in Neutral as flat rolled spot prices essentially moved sideways through the month. Whether using our index or the CRU price assessments, the monthly average on hot rolled was very close to where prices were measured […]