In Steel Market Update’s latest newsletter covering the flat rolled steel markets in North America, we informed our trial and annual members of the latest price moves by the domestic steel mills who also are beginning to revise their coating extras on galvanized steel, along with other industry news. AK Steel has raised all their prices on flat rolled products, making this the company’s third price increase on hot rolled, cold rolled, and galvanized products.

Another mill updating its prices is ArcelorMittal Dofasco, as the company announced new galvanized coating extras. SMU covered the new revisions and what it means to Dofasco customers, but we also keep up with all the other mills extras and in Thursday's issue we provided comparisons between the various mill extras. Steel Market Update compared five mills extras to those of ArcelorMittal.

Once every month, SMU participates in an industry conference call hosted by the Heating, Air-conditioning, Refrigeration, Distributors International (HARDI). HARDI members service the HVAC mechanical contractors involved in residential and commercial construction - large users of galvanized sheet steel. This last call discussed the recent price increases by domestic mills along with lead times, exports and the domestic industry overall.

Every week, we have a special article devoted to the hot rolled futures market. This week's article was written by Andre Marshall a well-known trader in the futures market and our instructor of our Price Volatility - Hedging Price Risk workshop (next workshop is Feb. 9th in Houston). This article describes futures trading over the past seven days and also touches on current market prices and conditions in the U.S. and internationally.

Chinese galvanized prices have begun to drop, according to our sources in Asia. Our article on this topic includes specifics on prices being quoted to Europe and a quick look at what could be a problem for domestic mills as other countries steel prices head in a different direction than ours.

We finish the newsletter with various articles including mill takeovers, new executive appointments, various economic data and industry news along with important ‘tidbits’ of information we have received since our last newsletter. If you are interested in these topics, please click the free trial or subscribe buttons below to read the newsletter 3x per week, delivered directly to your email. SMU will not publish the week of December 24 – January 2, 2012 although our offices will be open each day with the exception of December 26th. Our next newsletter is scheduled to be published on Tuesday, January 3rd and then three times per week during the New Year.