It has been a very quiet week due to the Thanksgiving Holiday here in the U.S. on Thursday. A number of service centers advised SMU that the number of inquiries had dramatically fallen off and there isn’t much need to buy steel at this time. The question isn’t so much where are prices this week […]
We ended the article above talking about the tight range we have seen on hot rolled coil over the past 12 months. Total price movement from low to high during that time period has been $65 per ton. The question is, will U.S. hot rolled coil prices break through the low of the past 12 […]
Flat rolled steel prices, as reported by Steel Market Update, Platts, CRU this past week (SteelBenchmarker did not report last week) had mixed results. CRU and SMU have hot rolled prices at $634 and $635 respectively. Platts remains stuck at $640 as they have been for a number of weeks now. SteelBenchmarker did not report […]
Last year at this time hot rolled steel prices averaged $670 per ton and were close to the peak for the year which was $680 per ton (SMU index HRC average). Lead times peaked the first week in December on all flat rolled with the exception of Galvalume. From mid-December 2013 until the middle of […]
The vast majority of our SMU steel survey respondents reported the domestic steel mills as willing to negotiate flat rolled steel prices this week. Those reporting the mills as willing to negotiate hot rolled prices increase by 2 percent to 70 percent of the respondents. Cold rolled jumped by an even greater margin from 52 […]
On October 28, 2014 AK Steel announced a $20 per ton ($1.00/cwt) price increase on hot rolled, cold rolled and galvanized steels. Shortly after, ArcelorMittal and then Nucor advised their customers of specific base price levels on new spot flat rolled orders. Hot rolled was to be offered at $33.00/cwt ($660 per ton or higher) […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) is seeing flat rolled steel prices as drifting at this time. We saw slight adjustments in both the upper and lower end of our range on hot rolled compressing our range. Cold rolled was up by $5 per ton while galvanized was unchanged and Galvalume was lower. Market players are sitting […]
Late last week Steel Market Update (SMU) adjusted our galvanized range to take into consideration the growing number of base prices reaching down to the $35.00/cwt level. Our galvanized range is now $35.00/cwt-$38.00/cwt for new spot orders. Over the weekend we adjusted our hot rolled range to reflect the lower numbers we have been collecting […]
Steel Market Update is revising our galvanized and Galvalume price ranges and averages to accommodate new information that we have been gathering this week. A number of steel buyers and at least one steel mill advised us that the low end of our ranges on these two products were not representative of the deals being […]
Licensed data for October was updated on November 4th through the Steel Import Monitoring System of the US Department of Commerce. The SMU publishes several import reports ranging from this very early look using licensed data to the very detailed analysis of final volumes by district of entry and source nation which is published in […]
We have been getting mixed messages from steel buyers this week regarding the status of the increase announcements and spot flat rolled steel prices. A number of buyers are reporting the mills as pushing the new numbers while others are reporting prices as remaining the same as they were one week ago. One thing that […]
One of the items Steel Market Update is watching closely is steel mill lead times. This is especially true after price increases have been announced. Typically, we see lead times move out (extend) after a price announcement has been made. This is due to the rush to get orders quoted prior to the increase announcement […]
Based on the responses from last week’s Steel Market Update survey of the flat rolled steel market, buyers and sellers of steel reported the domestic steel mills as less willing to negotiate steel prices than what we saw during the middle of October. However, even though the percentages were smaller, the majority of buyers and […]
Ternium reported earnings for the 3rd quarter 2014 this week. Ternium is a large steel producer in Mexico, which accounts for 60 percent of the company’s shipments, as well as Argentina which accounts for 24 percent. Ternium also owns a conversion mill in the United States which produces galvanized and Galvalume products along with prepainted […]
AK Steel, US Steel, Nucor (verbal) and ArcelorMittal all made spot price adjustments this past week. A number of the smaller mills are holding back or have lead times out into 2015 and their order books are closed. Steel Market Update Price Momentum Indicator continues to point toward Neutral meaning prices could be in transition […]
China has a number of taxes on steel, both domestically and for exports. This is one of the misunderstandings many countries have (including the United States). We have been speaking about the subject with one of our key Asian trading contacts over the past few days as we asked about possible suspension of Boron added […]
Prices dropped on all of the indexes and all of the products followed by Steel Market Update. The average for hot rolled, based on the four indexes, was $641 per ton. Steel Market Update saw the market as being down to an average of $630 per ton just prior to the AK Steel announcement. The […]
I adjusted the SMU Price Momentum Indicator from Lower to Neutral in recognition of the attempt by the domestic steel mills to reverse the price trend and move prices higher. A Neutral indicator means prices could move in either direction (or remain stable) over the next 30 days. I understand two mills have made very […]
There has been a flurry of activity as buyers and sellers of steel anticipate a possible price increase announcement (which came late this afternoon in the form of a $20 increase out of AK Steel). Buyers reported the domestic mills as being aggressive this week and we saw our price averages negatively impacted as prices […]
Total September steel imports were just shy 3.9 million net tons according to the Preliminary Census numbers just released by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Total steel imports were up 5.2 percent over August data, and up 38.0 percent year over year. Semi-finished imports (mostly slabs) were up 6.3 percent month over month and 47.3 […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) conducted our mid-October flat rolled steel market survey this week. Based on the results of that survey, we found lead times essentially unchanged from one week ago and basically the same as one year ago. Hot rolled averages 4.2 weeks, cold rolled 6.09 weeks, galvanized 6.11 weeks and Galvalume 6.58 weeks. […]
Buyers and sellers of flat rolled steel are advising Steel Market Update that the domestic steel mills are receptive to negotiating prices on all products. Based on the most recent SMU flat rolled steel market survey results, 94 percent of the respondents reported the mills as willing to discuss hot rolled pricing. This is up […]
Steel Market Update is hearing the rumors about the potential for a new flat rolled steel price increase. The rumors are mostly coming from the service center and financial community. But, our readers, if paying attention, should not be surprised by the rumors and the real possibility that the mills will attempt to cut their […]
Steel Dynamics third quarter net sales rose to $2.3 billion from $72 million in Q2 and $57 million in third quarter 2013. SDI shipped a record volume of steel in third quarter—1.9 million tons up from 1.58 million tons in Q3 2013 and 1.67 million tons in second quarter 2014. Production increased to 1.88 million […]
Based on the analysis of the responses we received so far this week on our survey coupled with channel checks we found flat rolled steel prices slipped on cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume while remaining the same on hot rolled. We found that it is too early to see if the termination of the Russian […]
Everyone is aware of the high level of flat rolled imports in 2014 – especially cold rolled and coated products. So, where does 2014 rank on a historical basis? It is on pace to be the third highest year on record. We have 8 months of actual import data on the books. August year-to-date flat […]
The following is our October analysis of the flat rolled and OCTG imports based on license data through October 21, 2014. As we have mentioned many times, license data is not exact and many times can lead one to over or under project final steel import numbers. We have seen license data for the first […]
On Friday, Steel Market Update adjusted our hot rolled coil price range to $620-$660 per ton and our average was adjusted to $640 per ton. All of the other indexes also moved lower on hot rolled coil and the average of the four steel price indexes moved lower by $8 per ton to $647 per […]
Although we heard from a number of buyers mixed messages regarding the spot markets. Some buyers are seeing the market as continuing to weaken while others feel the mills have dug in their heals and prices are firm (at least in their region of the country). We have heard rumors of one, or more, mills […]
Following the post-recession recovery, shipments of hot rolled steel from US mills to domestic locations have been trending in a range for three years. Shipments of hot dipped galvanized sheet and strip declined strongly in Q2 through Q4 2012 and have climbed slightly in 2014. Cold rolled shipments have shown little direction for almost two […]