Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
September 29, 2017
I am in Chicago and will be here until Tuesday when I make my way to Fort Wayne, Ind., to conduct one of our Steel 101 workshops. A special thank you to SDI and Paragon Steel for allowing our workshop to tour each of their plants. This workshop has been sold out for a number of weeks.
Our next Steel 101 workshop, which is now open for registrations, will be held Jan. 24-25, 2018, in Mobile, Ala. We will be touring the SSAB Mobile minimill. You can find more information about this workshop on our website.
I am going to take a personal liberty here for a moment. When I first started in the steel business, I worked for a company in Skokie, Ill., called Rolled Steel Corporation. As a junior salesperson, I sat in a large office with about 20 other junior and senior salespeople. Another junior salesperson named Mike Dunn sat behind me. It was from Mike I learned what a “nudge” was…. Mike passed away on Friday evening with his family by his side. My thoughts and prayers are with Mike, his wife Beth and his children and grandchildren.
I will be working with the service centers who are involved with our inventory “flash” report early this week and with the larger group of distributors who are working with us on our new Service Center Inventories Index (flat rolled). We hope to get our index published on or about the 10th of each month.
On Monday morning at 8 AM, we will begin canvassing manufacturers, service centers, steel mills, trading companies and toll processors about various trends (pricing, demand, service center spot, imports, etc.). If you receive an invitation, please take a few moments to answer the first question (shown in the invite), which will then take you to the rest of the questionnaire.
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
Is it just me, or does it seem like the summer doldrums might have arrived a little early? I could be wrong there. It’s possible we could see a jump in prices should buyers need to step back into the market to restock. I’ll be curious to see what service center inventories are when we update those figures on May 15. In the meantime, just about everyone we survey thinks HR prices have peaked or soon will. (See slide 17 in the April 26 survey.) Lead times have flattened out. And some of you tell me that you’re starting to see signs of them pulling back. (We’ll know more when we update our lead time data on Thursday.)
Final thoughts
Everybody has a plan… until they’ve dealt with volatility in the HRC market. While Mike Tyson’s original quote was about getting punched in the mouth, it’s unlikely the ex-champ has gone many pricing rounds with hot-rolled coil.
Final thoughts
Hold-rolled (HR) prices held roughly steady this week after slipping for much of April. I don’t have any spicy quotes to offer about mostly flat prices. Besides, a lot of the questions I’ve gotten recently have been about demand. Some of you tell me that it’s still stable or improving. Others tell me that it’s suddenly dried up.
Final thoughts
What a difference a month makes. In late March, it seemed like the US hot-rolled (HR) coil market was poised to cycle upward. Large buyers had re-entered the market and placed big orders earlier in the month. Several outages were underway or upcoming. And expectations were that lead times would continue to extend. Cliffs said […]
Final thoughts
I’ve gotten some questions lately about whether the huge gap between domestic hot-rolled coil (HR) prices and those for cold-rolled (CR) and coated is sustainable. I remember being asked similar questions about the wide spread between HR and plate that developed in early 2022. I thought at the time that there was no way that spread could hold. Turned out, I was wrong. That was humbling. And so I’m not going to make any bold predictions this time.