Final Thoughts

March 13, 2015

We will begin a new flat rolled steel market analysis (survey) on Monday morning at 8 AM ET. There are lots of questions which are unanswered and we want to probe your thoughts on the subject. As I mentioned, invites to the survey will be sent out at 8 AM ET. If you receive an invitation to participate please take a few moments to click on the link contained in the message which will take you to our questionnaire which is hosted by SurveyMonkey.com.

The chatter over the last couple of weeks has been what needs to happen for domestic prices to bottom. There are a number of ways companies are responding to what has happened over the past couple of months.

There are a number of companies who are wishing for the end to come so they don’t have to sell off inventory at ever increasing losses. These are the companies who are “upside down” in inventory. They may have double bought when foreign import prices looked so promising. Or they may have bought heavy domestically in anticipation of dumping suits that never got filed.

There is another group of companies who believe prices have further to fall. They are looking at the rise of the dollar, the demise of iron ore (which started dropping again last week) and are watching domestic scrap prices closely. They believe scrap has more to fall. If scrap does indeed fall in the next month or two then they believe steel prices will continue to drop.

Then there are those who are ready to buy (or who are buying) at current numbers.

What camp are you in?

As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.

John Packard, Publisher