Steel Mills to Customers: Forget Negotiating Steel Prices

As the thunderstorms erupt around our offices one of our indices is quite calm. The calming blue color of our bar graph depicts what buyers and sellers are telling us is happening during the negotiation process between mills and their customers: take it or leave it. Respondents to our mid-May flat rolled steel market trends analysis reported almost unanimously that there is virtually no negotiating flat rolled steel prices with the domestic steel mills at this time.

Both Galvalume and Cold Rolled were reported to have zero negotiating room while hot rolled (12 percent) and galvanized (10 percent) barely registered on our graphic. We will let the graphic tell the story.