China’s State Council announced today that it will relax regulations to allow foreign companies to set up wholly-owned steel manufacturing units in four pilot free trade zones. According to a posting on the Central government website, foreign firms will no longer be subject to certain qualification requirements and stake control restrictions when investing in the […]
What impact will Brexit have on the U.S. steel industry? Not much, says Metal Miner authorities Lisa Reisman, CEO & Executive Editor and Stuart Burns, Editor at Large, during a webinar presented July 13. The exit of the UK from the European Union is not likely to impact ferrous prices said Reisman. Instead steel prices […]
Both these data points are reported in the Federal Reserve G17 data base. The index had an all-time high of 106.70 in November 2014 and has trended down ever since. The good news is that the three month moving average (3MMA) had positive growth month/month in June for the first time since September last year. […]
New York manufacturers reported flat general business conditions in the July Empire State Manufacturing Survey. The headline index fell from +6.01 points to +0.55, following the seesaw pattern seen over the past few months. The indexes for shipments and new orders both fell significantly to +0.70 and -1.82, respectively. In June they were +9.32 and […]
End users who use specialty steels that are not readily available in the United States have to be concerned about both supply and price due to the successful prosecution of the antidumping and countervailing duty trade cases by the domestic steel industry. Earlier this week Steel Market Update received a “letter to the editor” which […]
Steel buyers believe that we have reached the top of the flat rolled steel price cycle and that all of the risk is downside from here. Even so, most of the buyers with whom SMU spoke over the past couple of days are not believers in the idea that steel prices will collapse in the […]
PPG industries announced that it has completed its acquisition of MetoKote Corporation and its affiliates. MetoKote is a U.S.-based coatings services business with 2015 global sales of approximately $200 million. The transaction closed on July 1 for an undisclosed sum. MetoKote is headquartered in Lima, Ohio, and has more than 1,500 employees. MetoKote applies coatings […]
The statement of Erica L. Groshe Commissioner Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released on Friday morning reads as though the increase in net non-farm employment of 287,000 in June was a fact as was the downwardly revised May number of 11,000. We at SMU don’t believe the May result has any credibility which is particularly […]
Flat rolled steel industry participants continue to be optimistic about the markets, according to the recent flat rolled market trends analysis conducted by Steel Market Update. However, we are seeing a slightly less optimistic trend for this time of year compared to what we were reporting at the same point in time in 2014 and […]
Buyers and sellers of flat rolled steel are not believers that the next move will be for higher flat rolled steel prices over the next couple of months. At least that is what the respondents to our most recent flat rolled steel questionnaire believe. Based on the analysis of last week’s survey, 60 percent of […]
Since 2008, Steel Market Update has been measuring how steel buyers and sellers feel about their company’s ability to be successful in the existing market environment (which we call “Current Sentiment”). We also probe the same group of manufacturers, steel service centers, steel mills, trading companies and toll processors on how they feel about their […]
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 […]
The following article on the hot rolled coil (HRC), busheling scrap (BUS), and financial futures markets was written by Dave Feldstein. As Flack Steel’s director of risk management, Dave is an active participant in the hot rolled coil (HRC) futures market and we believe he will provide insightful commentary and trading ideas to our readers. […]
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has asked the state’s members of Congress to begin the process of obtaining funding for a renovation of the Soo Locks. “The Soo Locks are crucial shipping link for some our nation’s biggest industries,” said Snyder. “The increase in outages from maintenance, redundancy and capacity issues poses significant economic consequences for […]
The PMI for the Manufacturing ISM Report on Business rose 1.9 percentage points to 53.2 in June, expanding for the fourth consecutive month. New orders gained 1.3 points and production 2.1 percentage points for readings of 57.0 and 54.7, respectively. The employment index grew 1.2 points to 50.4 percent. Inventories of raw materials registered 48.5, […]
Each month the Commerce Department issues its Construction Put in Place (CPIP) data, usually on the first working day covering activity two months earlier. May data was released on Friday July 1st and included revisions back to January 2014. Construction Put in Place is based on spending work as it occurs, estimated for a given […]
The Associated General Contractors of America report that construction spending fell 0.8 percent in May to $1.143 trillion. Most of the decline was due to lower spending in private nonresidential construction. The press release from AGC follows: Construction spending dipped in May but posted strong, broad-based gains for the first five months of 2016 compared […]
Global manufacturing was subdued in June according to a reading of 50.4 on the JPMorgan Global Manufacturing PMI. The PMI gained just 0.4 points with most of the solid improvement in the European Union. It should be noted that the data for the report was collated before the vote by the UK to exit the […]
To our USA customers welcome back from your 4th of July holiday. I saw this quote while doing some research this afternoon, “Fun is one of the most important and underrated ingredients in any successful venture” (Richard Branson) This is something I have believed in for my entire steel career. Speaking of fun, we have […]
This Key Markets Indicator report is something we produce for our Premium level clients. However, we thought that our Executive level readers would appreciate knowing… An explanation of the Key Indicators concept is given at the end of this piece for those readers who are unfamiliar with it. The total number of indicators considered in […]
Steel Market Update received the following question from one of our new readers who has a specific project related to sourcing of hot rolled and cold rolled steels from outside of the United States. Based on our conversation with the reader we believe this question is being raised at this time due to the wide […]
Manufacturing Indexes were reported from four Federal Reserve districts in the past two weeks with mixed results. Manufacturing surveys were released from Kansas City, Philadelphia, Richmond and Dallas. The survey results from Kansas City were the most positive of the four, returning to a positive reading for its composite index for the first time in […]
Metalforming companies surveyed in June are expecting little change in business conditions during the next three months. The June 2016 Precision Metalforming Association sampled 120 metalforming companies in the U.S. and found most expect economic activity to remain steady. Orders are expected to remain at stable, with 51 percent predicting no change compared to 44 […]
Leaders in the steel industry reacted favorably to Friday’s affirmative decision by the International Trade Commission (ITC)’s regarding injury to the industry resulting from the import of corrosion-resistant steel from China, India, Italy, Korea, and Taiwan. Mario Longhi, President and CEO, US Steel Corp.: “United States Steel Corporation is pleased with the International Trade Commission’s […]
The United Kingdom surprised the world by voting for an exit from the European Union on Thursday. Steel Market Update asked John Anton, Principal Economist-Steel at IHS Global Insight to provide us his insights into what this might mean for the global market. GDP growth in the EU27 is expected to lose 0.2 percent in […]
New orders for manufactured durable goods fell 2.2 percent in May to $230.7 billion after a revised gain of 3.3 percent in April, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. A Wall Street Journal survey of economists forecast a 0.4 percent drop while Bloomberg predicted a decline of 0.5 percent. May’s decline was broad-based across almost […]
I am working on an article about the difficulties manufacturing companies face when trying to recoup a portion (or all) of the flat rolled steel price increases from their customers. This morning I spoke with a manufacturing entity in the building materials segment of the industry who reported their industry has taken prices up by […]
Manufacturing companies reported steel service center spot prices as continuing to rise this past week. Seventy-eight percent of the manufacturing companies responding to our mid-June flat rolled steel market trends questionnaire said distributors were continuing to raise spot prices on flat rolled steel. The service centers themselves were less optimistic with only 51 percent of […]
Essar Steel Algoma announced today (June 17) that it has entered into an asset purchase agreement with KPS Capital Partners, LP. The sale is subject to approval by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. KPS, a leading private equity firm in the manufacturing sector, has a history of transforming challenged businesses into healthy, independent companies. […]