Tag: prices

Canadian steelmaker Stelco swung to a loss in the fourth quarter as revenue declined due to decreased shipping volume and average selling prices.

US light-vehicle (LV) sales rose to an unadjusted 1.08 million units in January, up 2.8% vs. year-ago levels, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported. Despite the year-on-year (y/y) boost, domestic LV sales were down 5.6% month on month (m/m). On an annualized basis, LV sales were 15 million units in January, down from […]

Steel Market Update’s Steel Demand Index has moved lower, having remained in contraction territory for the better part of the past two months, according to our latest survey data.

Falling steel prices at present are not a symptom of demand but of imports arriving into the US and to some parts of Mexico, Ternium’s CEO Maximo Vedoya said this week.

Latin American steelmaker Ternium posted a strong uptick in earnings in its fourth quarter, and sees increasing steel demand growth in Mexico.

We’ve all heard a lot about mill “discipline” following a wave of consolidation over the last few years. That discipline is often evident when prices are rising, less so when they are falling. I remember hearing earlier this year that mills weren’t going to let hot-rolled (HR) coil prices fall below $1,000 per short ton (st). Then not below $900/st. Now, some of you tell me that HR prices in the mid/high-$800s are the “1-800 price” – widely available to regular spot buyers. So what comes next, and will mills “hold the line” in the $800s?

US hot-rolled (HR) coil prices have fallen below $900 per short ton (st) on average for the first time since early November. SMU’s HR price stands at $875/st on average, down $65/st from a week ago and down $170/st from the beginning of the year.

The Italian government says it will appoint commissioners with specific steel-sector expertise in the coming days to assume control of the Taranto works, which is majority owned by ArcelorMittal.

Everyone knows the old saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Just because it’s a cliché doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. A lot of inked has been spilled trying to figure out why prices are falling now. I thought it might be as simple as this: Market dynamics in the fourth quarter (UAW strike, companies buying ahead of an anticipated post-strike price spike, etc.) pulled forward restocking activity that typically happens in the first quarter.

The CRUmpi declined by 1.7% month over month (m/m) to 325.2 in February, compared to a 4.3% m/m increase in February 2023.

What's the steel market talking about at present?

The LME 3-month price was broadly stable again on the morning of Feb. 16, and was last seen trading at $2,230 per metric ton (mt). On Feb. 16, LME stocks were reported at 534,925 mt, an increase of nearly 10,000 mt from last Friday. The change comes after 15,125 mt of metal was delivered into […]

The scrap export market has demonstrated resiliency so far this year from the US East Coast. This strength has mainly come from the Turkish market. Despite weakening orders for rebar in their domestic market, imported scrap prices have held up until the last several days. The US West Coast is not as active, but there are orders in South Asia and in South America that are keeping things afloat.

What a difference a month makes. There are a few full bulls left in the room, but their numbers are dwindling. We’ll release results of our full steel market survey tomorrow afternoon. I took a sneak peak at the data on Thursday. And more people than I expected think that US hot-rolled (HR) coil prices will be in the $700s per short ton (st) two months from now. Vanishingly few think prices will be above $1,000/st in mid-April.

It’s no secret that HRC futures have been particularly volatile over the past several years. The most recent instance was the outsized break in the March futures contract early this week. For companies procuring raw material in anticipation of higher prices or even to get ahead on future purchase orders from customers, understanding the relative price of that raw material versus the hot-rolled coil futures curve is important.

US hot-rolled coil (HRC) prices moved lower again this week, remaining largely on a downtrend since mid-January. The result has caused domestic tags to lessen their price premium over imported products week on week (w/w).

The spread between hot-rolled coil (HRC) and prime scrap prices narrowed further this month, according to SMU’s most recent pricing data.

Mill lead times for flat-rolled steel were mostly stable over the past two weeks. With several mills slow to come out of outages and upgrades, cold rolled and coated lead times have been holding up better than hot rolled.

Friedman Industries posted lower earnings in its fiscal third quarter but was upbeat on the next quarter due to the effect of increased hot-rolled coil prices.

The percentage of sheet buyers finding mills willing to negotiate spot pricing rose or remained relatively flat on the products SMU surveys, while plate slumped, according to our most recent survey data.

Flat Rolled = 60.3 Shipping Days of Supply Plate = 63.4 Shipping Days of Supply Flat Rolled US service center flat-rolled steel supply declined in January, though less than expected because of a weaker-than-normal seasonal increase in shipments to start the year. At the end of January, service centers carried 60.3 shipping days of supply […]

Reliance Inc. – formerly Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. – introduced its “new company identity” that emphasized its “evolution to more than steel,” the company said in its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings report.

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. announced on Thursday, Feb. 15, that it will indefinitely idle tinplate production at its mill in Weirton, W.Va.

Sheet prices have fallen again this week on shorter lead times, higher imports, and potentially higher inventories. (We’ll see for sure when we release our service center shipment and inventory data next week.) I remember reporting almost exactly the same thing about a month ago and getting a fair amount of pushback. Not so much these days.

The pace of sheet price declines accelerated this week as steel buyers said that domestic mills were competing against each other while also coping with higher-than-expected import volumes. “They are getting rid of the fluff. When you can pit 2-3 mills against each other, the fat margins get cut,” one industry source said.

Prices for galvanized products have been falling for more than a month, and market participants expect this trend to continue in the near term.

US busheling scrap prices fell this month, while HMS and shredded grades remained largely unchanged.

What’s something going on in the market that no one is talking about? That’s a question on our survey, and was also posed to many who graced the stage at our Tampa Steel Conference. Perhaps another way to phrase that is “not talking about publicly” or connecting the dots of steel market chatter to find a uniting central issue. I thought one respondent to our survey really summed up the current moment: “Right now it is all politics.”

Last week, steel consumers prevailed in a rare victory over US petitioners in trade cases on tin mill steel products. The US International Trade Commission (ITC) voted 4—0 that Cleveland-Cliffs, the sole remaining domestic producer of tin mill products (used to make containers such as “tin cans”) was neither injured nor threatened with injury by imports of competing products from Canada, China, and Germany. Imports from South Korea were found to be “negligible,” and the investigation on Korean imports was terminated. 

Steel prices stabilized in early January before they began to inflect lower midway through last month. Tags peaked at $1,045 per short ton (st) during the first week of January, even as some mills tried to push prices higher, to no avail. Hot-rolled coil (HRC) prices ended January at an average of $1,000/st, declining by $45/st during the month.