Service Centers

Service Center Inventories Rising

Written by John Packard

January 13, 2014

One of the interesting points brought out in the most recent flat rolled steel survey is distributors inventories are rising. According to the results from last week’s survey steel inventories rose to their highest levels since January 2013 and now stand at 2.35 months.

MSCI data is due out later this week and SMU is forecasting that our Apparent Deficit of -58,000 tons will move into excess when the new data is released. Our forecast is for flat rolled inventories to move into an Apparent Excess of +150,000 tons (December MSCI) and +241,000 tons by the end of January before dropping back at the end of February. The link we have provided at the beginning of this paragraph takes you back to our original article and forecast. We will revise our forecast once the new MSCI data is revealed.

John Packard

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