In the latest edition of our Steel Market Update (SMU) newsletter which was published Friday morning for our members, we discussed a variety of subjects which impact the steel community. The articles published included information about mill price increases, hot rolled & billet futures, raw steel production, construction spending, November auto sales, and other subjects we believe to be relevant to those involved in the flat rolled & related steel industries.

Here is a brief summary of a few of the articles from our Friday morning newsletter.

Flat rolled steel prices are one of the areas we focus our energies as we try to keep our readers in touch with the latest pricing events/announcements as well as our analysis of pricing in the North American steel markets. On Friday SMU published the ArcelorMittal Dofasco price increase memorandum and explained both the Canadian and US base prices for the Dofasco sales organization.

At the end of every month, we do a recap of the key data covered by SMU during the course of the month. We recap pricing - both our own indexes as well as the CRU indices. We review economic data and a number of our own SMU proprietary products such as the SMU Price Momentum Indicator and SMU Steel Buyers Sentiment Index.

SMU Steel Buyers Sentiment Index is a measurement of the current attitude of buyers and sellers of flat rolled steel as to how they feel about their company's ability to be successful in today's market. It is a proprietary product developed by Steel Market Update for the North American steel industry. The index is now at +21 with a full explanation of what this means is published in our most recent issue of our newsletter.

On Friday SMU reported on AISI October’s raw steel production numbers and capacity utilization rates, which are broken down by short tons produced by electric arc furnaces and those produced via blast furnace.

Auto sales are an important segment to the flat rolled steel market and one of the strongest market segments in the current economic environment. November total vehicle sales were reported to have been at a 14 million SAAR pace, with Chrysler Group LLC and Nissan Motor Co. leading the way. The newsletter goes into detail on the major automakers sales and market share.

Since SMU is operated by someone who was actively involved in the flat rolled steel industry for more than 31 years - we tackle topics others do not even know exist. A good example of this can be found in Friday's newsletter as SMU opened "Pandora's Box" with an article about Theoretical Nominal Invoicing. The article is also meant to be interactive as we input a link to a 3-question survey regarding what are the industry norms for theoretical nominal weight invoicing.

If you are interested in the flat rolled steel and related markets we encourage you to spend a few moments to register for our Steel Market Update newsletter – either as a free trial (2 weeks) or as a new subscriber/member. You can do either on our website: www.steelmarketupdate.com or by contacting our office by email: info@steelmarketupdate.com. We have also provided links (buttons) to our free trial, subscription and events sections of our website just below this blog post.