Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
March 16, 2015
I want to shout out to all of the people who worked on tonight’s newsletter as this has been a particularly hectic day for me due to my travel schedule. Brett Linton and Sandy Williams both did great jobs (as usual) as they bounced from subject to subject and article to article. Peter Wright continues to provide great insights as does Damon Sun from an Asian scrap perspective. Thank you all.
This is a busy issue due to the release of the MSCI data, March import license data, our flat rolled steel price ranges and indices as well as numerous articles regarding China and its exports, both around the world and into the United States. We have received a number of questions about the possibility of AD (anti-dumping) suits on light flat rolled (cold rolled and coated) so I wanted to do my best to get good information out there to our readers. A special thank you to attorney’s Lewis Leibowitz (consumer advocate) and Roger Schagrin (mill advocate) as well as former AIIS president, David Phelps for their help in getting me quality information for you to review.
I hope that those of you who are on a free trial to our newsletter are getting a sense of the dedication we put into each and every issue. It is not enough to just give an answer to a question, when possible we will go the extra mile to research the issue and provide details that our readers can then act upon as needed.
We do the same thing in our workshops and conferences. Our goal is to both educate and entertain. We want our attendees to feel like they got more than a one night stand and rather the beginning of a long term relationship. We have a couple of workshops coming up in the coming months: Managing Price Risk II (modified to add a new instructor to the mix) which will be held in Chicago at the end of April and Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals which will be held on May 19-20 just outside of Chicago (Merryville, Indiana) which will also include a tour of the NLMK Indiana steel mill. Details can be found on our website in the Events section or, feel free to contact our office: 800-432-3475.
As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, Publisher
John Packard
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Final thoughts
Cleveland-Cliffs is seeking $750 per short ton (st) for hot-rolled coil. That’s $20/st above where the steelmaker had been. It’s also $30/st above Nucor, which is at $720/st this week. We've seen prices increase incrementally this week. SMU's HR price, for example, stands at $690/st on average, up $5/st from last week. The questions now are whether a number well above $700/st will stick, whether other mills will follow Cliffs, and whether there is enough demand to support higher prices.
Final thoughts
We got a little flack for adjusting our sheet momentum indicators to neutral last week. To be clear, we didn’t adjust them to lower. Part of the reason we moved them to neutral was because there are some unusual cross-currents in the current market. On the news side, you could make a case that there should nowhere to go but up.
Final thoughts
I think all of us know that sometimes courtships go wrong. A misplaced word or deed and soon things can go sideways, and not in the prices sense. Such could be the case with Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel’s play for U.S. Steel.
Final thoughts
We’re starting to see some impacts of the big trade case filed last week against imports of coated flat-rolled steel from 10 nations. Namely, we’ve heard that a range of traders have stopped offering material from Vietnam. An alleged dumping margin of nearly 160% will do that. Especially amid chatter of critical circumstances.
Final thoughts
The phrase “political football” has been tossed around a lot lately. (Pun probably intended.) For the humble journalists at SMU who thought the week following Steel Summit would prove a quiet one… the news cycle had other ideas