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    February 4, 2013

    SMU Comparison Price Indices: Split Develops

    Written by John Packard

    After speaking with Platts on Friday – Mr. Surma of US Steel was correct in his call with analysts, there is one index which has hot rolled coil (Midwest) at $630 this week. A split has developed amongst the indexes as various price points have been gathered over the past week to ten days (depending on the index) which have created reasons for each index to publish their numbers the way they did. In our case we still picked up offers out of two regions into the Midwest which did not allow us to move off the low end of our range ($580) while the upper end of our range was the same as that shown by Platts to their customers ($640). The CRU, which is the benchmark for the industry, came in $4 per ton below our $610 at $606. Steel Orbis did not provide SMU new numbers by the time we published on Sunday afternoon.

    John Packard

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