Steel Products
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
March 18, 2013
Steel Market Update will begin our mid-March steel survey on Monday morning. Invitations will be sent out at approximately 8 AM ET. If you receive an invitation please spend a few moments to click on the link – which will take you to SurveyMonkey.com – to complete our survey. Your opinions are valuable to our understanding of the flat rolled steel market and we appreciate the few moments it takes to complete our survey.
A reminder of our upcoming Managing Price Risk workshop – which is dedicated to understanding the hot rolled coil (HRC) futures and options markets as well as the ferrous scrap futures market based on Midwest #1 busheling (BUS). Our workshop assists in the understanding as to how to utilize derivatives either in your own company or as a way of protecting one of your customer’s business. It is also important to understand when the product is not a good fit for your organization. Our next workshop will be in New York City at the NYMEX (CME Group) building in lower Manhattan. Details can be found here or by visiting the events section of our website: www.SteelMarketUpdate.com.
We are hopeful that we will be able to make an announcement regarding our next Steel 101 workshop (which has a waiting list) a little later this week. An executive from one of the companies which sent delegates to our last Steel 101 workshop told me late last week, “Our group came back with rave reviews of your latest Steel 101 session. They learned a lot that we never take the time to cover. Also spoke with some new customers in the HVAC industry in the Northeast who read you religiously. You are gaining quite a good reputation. Lots of people appreciate what you do – as we do. Keep up the good work!”
As always we want to take a moment to thank our members for their support. Both your business and kind words are greatly appreciated.

John Packard
Read more from John PackardLatest in Steel Products

Galv buyers less optimistic about short-term market
“It was a little more of a seller's market as contractors seemed to be protecting themselves against a potential run up in prices," one buyer said.

SMU flat-rolled market survey results now available
SMU’s latest steel buyers market survey results are now available on our website to all premium members. After logging in at steelmarketupdate.com, visit the pricing and analysis tab and look under the “survey results” section for “latest survey results.” Past survey results are also available under that selection. If you need help accessing the survey results, or if […]

US, offshore CRC prices continue to fall
US cold-rolled (CR) coil prices were down again this week, slipping six weeks in a row and seeing the sharpest drop-off since last July.

Asian HR remains much cheaper than US, EU product
Domestic hot-rolled (HR) coil prices fell this week, now down seven of the last eight weeks.

April service center shipments and inventories report
Flat rolled = 57.6 shipping days of supply Plate = 54.5 shipping days of supply Flat rolled US service centers’ flat-rolled steel supply edged up in April, as shipments slowed. At the end of April, US service centers carried 57.6 shipping days of supply, according to adjusted SMU data. This is up from 56.4 shipping […]