Flat rolled steel prices slipped across the board this past week as the domestic steel mills became more aggressive in order to finish filling their August order books (hot rolled) as well as September (cold rolled and coated). For the first time in many months, Steel Market Update adjusted our hot rolled and cold rolled […]
The SMU monthly import analysis describes the total tonnage by product. It is intended to be a big picture commentary that describes how import volumes are changing and by implication what effect they are having on the macro market. It does not provide any regional information nor does it tell us the country of origin. […]
Steel Market Update is reintroducing our monthly analysis of foreign steel imports into the United States by product, port and country. This report will be available to our Premium level members shortly after the U.S. government releases the Final Census data for each month. The data was just released for the month of June. Since […]
This report summarizes total steel supply from 2003 through June 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 […]
A steel mill told SMU this afternoon, “The week has definitely taken a turn south.” Over the past twenty-four hours a couple of the domestic steel mills have moved their base spot number on hot rolled to $570 to $590 per ton ($28.50/cwt to $29.50/cwt). We are receiving mixed messages regarding whether there are specific […]
The hot rolled announcement has been made and the market is sifting through the results in order to figure out whether the results are good or bad for the steel industry. Of course, the answer to that question depends on what your end motivation is. Lower prices are good for manufacturing but bad for the […]
We saw minor erosion in hot rolled prices this past week according to the steel indexes followed by Steel Market Update. Both our own index as well as Platts dropped their HRC average by $5 per ton. As of the end of last week Steel Market Update was showing hot rolled as averaging $610 per […]
Earlier this week we began our early August flat rolled steel market trends analysis. The process began with invitations going out to approximately 570 steel executives in the manufacturing, service center/wholesaler, trading company, steel mill and toll processing communities. The invitations are purposely heavily weighted toward manufacturing and service center/wholesalers as those two segments purchase […]
The following information was collected from our flat rolled steel market trends survey which we have been conducting since Monday of this week. Much of the collection information is similar to the Lead Times article above as this question is posed to manufacturing companies and distributors. What we are trying to discover is if there […]
A couple of the steel mills SMU spoke with today reported their coated order books as being close to closed for September. They reported that there is not a need to make any price adjustments. At the same time, both the mills we spoke with, as well as steel buyers around the country, are anxiously […]
Flat rolled steel prices remained essentially unchanged for yet another week. We did pick up a break in the $600 barrier on hot rolled steel. However, we were only able to tie that price level to one Canadian mill into the Chicago market. The other mills appear to be holding much closer to $610-$620 per […]
We pointed out a couple of weeks back that lead times have been slowly shrinking but are still longer than year ago levels. Lead times refer to the amount of time it takes to get an order placed today produced at one of the domestic steel mills. The steel mill lead times we are discussing […]
As lead times begin to come back in (shorten), we are seeing an increase in the percentage of our flat rolled steel survey respondents who are reporting the steel mills as willing to negotiate steel prices. Hot rolled continues to be the weakest product. It has the shortest lead time and we have heard from […]
Flat rolled steel prices slipped on both Platts and Steel Market Update this past week. Benchmark hot rolled slid $10 per ton on SMU and $10 per ton on Platts with our average now down $8 per ton for the week. SteelBenchmarker did not report steel prices this past week. Cold rolled prices remained stationary […]
Steel buyers purchasing foreign galvanized or Galvalume steels out of Taiwan will be paying higher prices due to a surprise change in the AD duty rate by the US Department of Commerce. Citing “ministerial errors” The US Department of Commerce International Trade Commission has adjusted the corrosion resistant (galvanized/Galvalume) duties for Taiwan from 3.77 percent […]
The spread between hot rolled and cold rolled/coated steels continues to be at dangerous (my opinion) levels. The U.S. steel industry has been systematically “building a dam” (Lewis Leibowitz words) around this country in order to prevent what they call unfairly subsidized and unfairly traded plate, hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume steels. The […]
Flat rolled steel prices have been “drifting” over the past few weeks. By that we mean there has been some minor adjustments to pricing on a weekly basis but nothing that would qualify as a trend in one direction or another. Steel buyers are trying to gauge the strength and direction of the breeze blowing […]
U.S. steel service centers shipped a total of 3,385,100 net tons of all steel products during the month of June 2016 according to recently released data from the Metal Service Center Institute. This is 5.1 percent lower than one year ago. The daily shipment rate was 153,900 tons up slightly from the 152,600 tons shipped […]
Steel Dynamics announced second quarter 2016 net income of $142 million on net sales of $2.0 billion. In comparison, net sales in Q1 totaled $1.7 billion with net income of $63 million and year ago sales were $2.0 billion with adjusted net income of $53 million. A decline in imports of flat rolled steel and […]
Flat rolled prices had a relatively “ho hum” week as we saw very little movement in any of the indexes with the exception of SteelBenchmarker which only produces prices twice per month. Benchmark hot rolled prices ranged from a low (average) from our own index which came in at $620 per ton for a second […]
Flat rolled steel buyers reported steel prices as being essentially unchanged from this time last week. Here is how we see prices this week: Hot Rolled Coil: SMU Range is $600-$640 per ton ($30.00/cwt- $32.00/cwt) with an average of $620 per ton ($31.00/cwt) FOB mill, east of the Rockies. Both the lower and upper end […]
This report summarizes total steel supply from 2003 through May 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 […]
Flat rolled steel prices continued to trade within a relatively narrow range this past week according to the steel indexes followed by Steel Market Update. Benchmark hot rolled coil was reported as being down $8 per ton by our own index while Platts has kept the product stable for yet another week. SMU HRC average […]
Galvanized steels continue to see strong bookings at the domestic steel mills with August sold out at all but SDI, The Techs and Wheeling Nisshin according to SMU sources. One of the domestic mills told Steel Market Update earlier this week that coated products were on “autopilot” as bookings remain strong and they were not […]
On Tuesday of this week Steel Market Update began canvassing the flat rolled steel industry through the use of our online survey which we use twice per month. We invited slightly more than 550 people to participate as we try to analyze market trends. One of the key areas of inquiry is that of lead […]
A second key subject addressed in our flat rolled steel survey regards negotiations between the domestic steel mills and their customers. We ask manufacturing companies and steel service centers to comment on whether their domestic mill suppliers are willing to negotiate spot steel pricing on hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume steels. The less […]
Licensed data for June was reported by the Steel Import Monitoring System of the US Commerce Department on July 5th. An explanation of the methodology that we at SMU use to analyze the trade data is given at the end of this piece. Total rolled product licensed imports in the single month of June were 2,169,434 […]
Licensed data for July was reported by the Steel Import Monitoring System of the US Commerce Department on August 2nd. An explanation of the methodology that we at SMU use to analyze the trade data is given at the end of this piece. Total rolled product licensed imports in the single month of July were […]
Flat rolled prices were relatively flat for yet another week as the 4th of July holiday kept buyers and sellers thinking of something other than buying and selling steel. Steel Market Update is picking up signs of slowing order books at a number of mills as the number of “inquire only” products begins to dwindle […]
Flat rolled steel prices seem to have stabilized, even if there was some see-sawing among the indexes followed by Steel Market Update this past week. Benchmark hot rolled prices are hovering close to $630 per ton with SMU ($627.50 per ton), SteelBenchmarker ($627) and Platts ($630) all within $3 per ton of each other. Last […]