The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report on non-farm employment indicated that 214,000 jobs were added in October, September and August were revised up by 8,000 and 23,000 respectively. The three month moving average, (3MMA) has declined for four straight months but this job recovery is stronger than was the case in the mid-2000s, (Figure […]
Explanation of data sources: The broad index is published by the Federal Reserve on both a daily and monthly basis. It is a weighted average of the foreign exchange values of the U.S. dollar against the currencies of a large group of major U.S. trading partners. The index weights, which change over time, are derived […]
Occasionally we publish a piece on the state of the Eurozone because we regard the inevitable future transformation (disintegration) of this region to be of immense significance to the US steel industry. The following was written by Ambrose Evans Pritchard and published in the UK Daily Telegraph on Monday November 10th. Mario Draghi’s Efforts to […]
The Association of American Railroads reported 305,389 carloads for the week ending Nov 1, 2014, up 4.3 percent year over. Intermodal volume increased 5.9 percent y/y to 279,819 units for the highest volume ever. “America’s railroads are moving an enormous amount of freight today,” said AAR Senior Vice President John T. Gray. “In the first […]
With crude oil prices breaking through $80 per barrel, all eyes are on the Baker Hughes rig count data. The question is will the lower oil prices affect the number of wells being drilled be affected? Most assume there will be an impact however, it could have a lag effect and take time before there […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce announced today the initiation of antidumping (AD) and countervailing duty (CVD) investigations on imports of welded line pipe from South Korea and Turkey. The information below is quoted from the text of the International Trade Administration press release: The merchandise covered by these investigations is circular welded carbon and alloy steel […]
We thought our readers might be interested in reading what the AISI reported regarding foreign steel imports for the month of October. Washington, D.C. – Based on the Commerce Department’s most recent Steel Import Monitoring and Analysis (SIMA) data, the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) reported today that steel import permit applications for the […]
Andre Marshall, well known commodity futures trader, CEO of Crunch Risk LLC and instructor for our Managing Price Risk I and II workshops has written today’s HRC futures article. Today he comments on the financial markets, steel, iron ore and ferrous scrap markets. Financial Markets: All time highs again in the stock markets. We are […]
According to Baker Hughes data from October 31st 2014, the U.S rig count for this week is 1,929 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This count represents an increase of 2 rigs compared to last week, with oil rigs down 13 to 1,582 rigs, gas rigs up 14 to 346 rigs, and […]
US Steel announced in their earnings conference call that Carnegie Way benefits now total $495 million for 2014 due primarily to improvements in manufacturing processes, supply chain and logistics, and SG&A reductions. “While our operating difficulties in North America in the first half of the year made it difficult to see the results of our […]
A.M. Castle & Co. reported net sales of $245.5 million for third quarter for a net loss of $7.3 million. Metals segment sales totaled $210.7 million, down 1.6 percent from the previous quarter and 4.2 percent lower year over year. Pricing dropped 2.5 percent and sales volumes declined 1.4 percent compared to Q3 2013. “While […]
Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co reported record sales for third quarter of $2.71 billion on shipments of 1.5 million tons. Not only did the company have good results to report, the Reliance executives had good commentary to offer in their third quarter conference call. Reliance noted that their purchase of imported steel has increased from […]
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 […]
According to Baker Hughes data from October 24th 2014, the U.S rig count for this week is 1,927 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This count represents an increase of 9 rigs compared to last week, with oil rigs up 5 to 1,595 rigs, gas rigs up 4 to 332 rigs, and […]
Paul Lowrey of Steel Research Associates was discussing the size of the market segments with SMU back in September during our Steel Summit Conference in Atlanta. He was making sure that we were aware that the energy markets are now the largest steel consuming segment of the steel industry, especially if you take into consideration […]
A proposal by Transport Canada may be devastating for U.S. cargo ships delivering raw materials on the Great Lakes. The proposal would require lakers to be equipped with ballast water treatment systems like their oceangoing sister ships. The water treatment systems are designed to eliminating invasive species from being introduced to coastal waters through ballast […]
I spent a good portion of this week either in Louisiana or traveling to and from the state. I attended an energy conference at Louisiana State University (LSU) which I found to be fascinating. I found out how little I knew about the various drilling operations for oil and natural gas and how far the […]
Figure 1 shows historical gas and oil prices since January 2000. The daily spot price of West Texas Intermediate fell below $100 in August and by October 14th was down to $81.72, the latest daily figure available from the Energy Information Administration, (EIA.) Brent closed at $86.36 on the same day. The EIA has calculated […]
US pipe producers filed dumping and countervailing duty petitions on Line Pipe against producers in Korea and Turkey, alleging dumping margins of 16 percent against Turkey and from 58 percent to 221 percent against Korea (the alleged CVD margins are not known or not published at this time). This comes relatively shortly after the trade case […]
According to Baker Hughes data from October 17th 2014, the U.S rig count for this week is 1,918 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This count represents a decrease of 12 rigs compared to last week, with oil rigs down 19 to 1,590 rigs, gas rigs up 8 to 328 rigs, and […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) is changing the way we look at the import license data. As we have mentioned on numerous occasions, the steel import license data can only provide an idea as to how imports are shaping up for the current month. The licenses received have been tending to surge at the beginning of […]
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) made the following statement this week: “Despite setbacks, an uneven global recovery continues. Largely due to weaker-than-expected global activity in the first half of 2014, the growth forecast for the world economy has been revised downward to 3.3 percent for this year, 0.4 percentage point lower than in the April […]
Cliffs Natural Resources will begin using trucks to transport taconite pellets to the docks from its Minnesota facility due to rail congestion in the upper Midwest. In an announcement on Friday, the company said it will immediately begin utilizing 100 trucks per day to ship iron ore pellets from Hibbing Taconite to the Duluth-Superior harbor […]
It was nice to see that US Steel was able to get a contract with their USW Local 1005 at Hamilton Works in Canada. Their contract was set to expire tomorrow (October 15th). For our Premium level members, we should have the Imports by Product, Port and Country for August on our website by sometime […]
Below is the latest data issued by the The Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) regarding residential and commercial heating and cooling equipment shipments through August 2014. You may read the press release on their website here. Residential Storage Water Heaters U.S. shipments of residential gas storage water heaters for August 2014 decreased 4.0 percent, […]
According to Baker Hughes data from October 10th 2014, the U.S rig count for this week is 1,930 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This count represents an increase of 8 rigs compared to last week, with oil rigs up 18 to 1,609 rigs, gas rigs down 10 to 320 rigs, and […]
Final steel imports totaled 3,698,435 net tons (3,355,168 metric tons) for the month of August, down 4.2 percent from 3,858,692 tons in July but up 28.5 percent from 2,878,367 tons August of last year. On a 12 month moving average (12MMA) basis, total steel imports through August are at the highest level recorded in our […]
The World Steel Association has downgraded it Short Range Outlook for apparent steel usage for 2014 and 2015 to 2 percent each year-over-year from it’s previous April forecast of 3.1 percent in 2014 and 3.3 percent in 2015. The slowing markets in China, South American and CIS were cited as reasons for the changed in […]
Hot-rolled coil steel from Germany, China and France may soon be subjected to antidumping duties from Mexico. Mexico’s Ministry of economy has launched an investigation following a complaint by Ternium Mexico and Altos Hornos de Mexico (AHMSA) that imports of HRC from the three countries between 2011 and 2013 lowered prices and harmed Mexican producers. […]
Our Price Momentum Indicator has been stuck in “Neutral” since the last day of June 2014. We are now entering our 4th month and hot rolled steel prices have barely budged from the center line (OK, there have been some mild gyrations but no clear cut path up or down during the past three months). […]