As this issue started and I began working on my final thoughts for tonight’s issue, it began with comments from one of our service center friends about the prospect of dumping suits being filed. As the evening progressed I started to receive a number of credible comments from steel mills, service centers and others. The […]
Last month, Alfred (Al) Plummer, Sales Manager for Hanwa American Corporation, made a presentation about the steel industry at a regional meeting of the Association of Steel Distributors (ASD). Over the past few days Mr. Plummer has been communicating with Steel Market Update and we thought that the items being discussed should be of interest […]
We ended the month of April with the SMU Price Momentum Indicator at Neutral. As the month of May began, the domestic mills announced price increases and managed to move our needle to Higher. As the month ends, our Momentum Indicator continues to point toward higher domestic flat rolled steel prices over the next 30 […]
According to Baker Hughes data from May 29, 2015, the U.S rig count for the week was 875 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. The last time the active U.S. count was this low was back on January 31, 2003 at 873 rigs. This week’s total rig count is down 10 rigs […]
To those of you who receive invitations to participate in our flat rolled steel market questionnaire (survey) we will send out invitations for the early June analysis on Monday, June 1st at 8 AM. The survey will remain open until Thursday afternoon. Please take a few moments to click on the button (link) which will […]
After 39 consecutive weeks of being negative, the Steel Market Update (SMU) Price MoMo Index for flat rolled steel in the United States is showing positive hot rolled coil price momentum. MoMo, a trailing indicator, is measured as a percentage and shows the relation of the current hot rolled coil (HRC) price movements against the […]
That sound you may be hearing is the drums (again) pounding, pounding louder and louder. I continue to get calls from people who “heard from a friend” that the dumping suits are days, maybe hours away. I don’t know if it is the boy in the woods crying wolf for the umpteenth time. Or a […]
Twice per month, Steel Market Update (SMU) conducts a detailed flat rolled steel market analysis. We do this by inviting approximately 600 companies, which have been vetted by our publisher to make sure they are legitimate buyers, sellers or executives involved with hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized, Galvalume or plate products. We then send invitations […]
One of the core themes in my series of articles on steel purchasing basics is the importance of the supplier/customer relationship. Many large OEM customers rate their suppliers as a tool in order to get them to improve their performance but generally they pay little attention to how their suppliers rate them. However, Planning Perspectives […]
According to Baker Hughes data from May 22, 2015, the U.S rig count for the week was 885 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. The last time the active U.S. count was this low was back on June 12, 2009 at 876 rigs. This week’s total rig count is down 3 rigs […]
About a week ago I asked if our readers would mind if we switched from a three day a week schedule to twice a week plus supplemental issues as warranted. We provided a link and to date we have received a modest number of respondents with 90 percent responding they did not have objections to […]
Steel Buyers Sentiment continues to be well within the optimistic end of our range as the Steel Market Update (SMU) Future Sentiment Index was reported to be +61 this week. This is up one point from two weeks ago but unchanged from one month ago. The SMU Future Sentiment Index measures how buyers and sellers […]
According to the results of the Steel Market Update most recent flat rolled steel survey, domestic steel mill lead times are beginning to extend reflecting the improvement in the mills’ order books. We are, however, still far away from the lead times that we saw in the middle of May 2014. Hot rolled lead times […]
U.S. and Canadian steel buyers reported mills as less willing to negotiate flat rolled steel prices (hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume prices) at the beginning of the month of May. Prior to that, the domestic steel mills had been extremely active and willing to negotiate pricing on all products. This, according to our […]
We decided to focus on medium and heavy truck (M&HT) production this month as this sector has had little recognition in our past vehicle production reports. Interestingly M&HT production in NAFTA has been a terrific leading indicator of recessions since 1990. Figure 1 has recessions highlighted. It seems that the planners of truck production read […]
A quick reminder that this weekend is Memorial Day Weekend and Steel Market Update will not publish our Sunday evening issue. The next time we will publish will be on Tuesday evening (unless something happens which warrants your immediate attention). For those of you in the United States enjoy your Memorial Day Holiday Weekend with […]
Housing starts surprised on the upside in April, possibly as a result of projects delayed by bad weather in the Northeast and Midwest picked up the pace. Total starts were 1,135,000 up from 944,000 in March. Single family were up by 16 percent and multifamily by 27 percent. At SMU we prefer to work with […]
Last month Steel Market Update (SMU) forecast flat shipments for the month of April. We believed at that time that the U.S. flat rolled steel service centers would ship 108,600 tons per day or total flat rolled shipments of 2,389,200. According to the Metal Service Center Institute (MSCI), which released shipment and inventory data for […]
Good evening from Merrillville, Indiana, home of our Steel 101 workshop which started earlier today and continues tomorrow. We toured the NLMK USA Portage, Indiana steel mill this afternoon in absolutely perfect conditions. Its cool here (high 50’s) and cloudy today (we are close to Lake Michigan) after arriving to high 70’s and sunny skies. […]
According to Baker Hughes data from May 15th, 2015, the U.S rig count for the week was 888 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. The last time the active U.S. count was this low was back on June 12, 2009 at 876 rigs. This week’s total rig count is down 6 rigs […]
Networking is always an important piece of doing business in the steel business. There are, in my opinion, three great places to network and each is a little different from the others. I attended the Metals Industry Dinner in support of the Chicago area Boy Scouts (Boy Scout Dinner) on Thursday of last week. The […]
Below is the latest data issued by the the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) regarding residential and commercial heating and cooling equipment shipments through March 2015. You may read the press release on their website here. Residential Storage Water Heaters U.S. shipments of residential gas storage water heaters for March 2015 increased 12.8 percent, […]
The Steel Market Update Price MoMo Index for flat rolled steel in the U.S. is showing positive hot rolled coil price momentum after being negative for 37 consecutive weeks. MoMo, a trailing indicator, is measured as a percentage and shows the relation of the current hot rolled coil (HRC) price movements against the previous 12-week […]
Short comments this evening as I am attending the Metals Industry Dinner (Boy Scout Dinner) in Chicago. The sentiment within the room was mostly optimistic, although there were a number of conversations about April not being a great month or not meeting expectations. This would help explain some of the weakness seen in the MSCI […]
This week Steel Market Update adjusted our Price Momentum Indicator to Higher from Neutral. Based on our checks of the steel buying community, prices are beginning to firm and the $20 per ton price increase announced by a number of the steel mills appears to be sticking. SMU is of the opinion as long as […]
The domestic flat rolled steel mill lead times have begun to move out, according to the results from our flat rolled steel analysis questionnaire conducted this past week. We are seeing movement on all four products: hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume. Lead times had bottomed in January and February and we started to […]
The domestic steel mills are still willing to negotiate according to the majority of last week SMU flat rolled steel market survey respondents. However, for the first time in many months we are seeing a break in the “tell me what it’s going to take” negotiating tactic and more of the “here is our bottom, […]
Buyers and sellers of flat rolled steel are split over whether or not the price increase announcements of two weeks ago will actually be collected. This past week we invited approximately 600 companies to participate in our flat rolled steel market survey. Of the more than 100 companies who responded fifty-three percent told SMU that […]
According to Baker Hughes data from May 10th, 2015, the U.S rig count for the week was 894 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. The last time the active U.S. count was this low was back on June 12, 2009 at 876 rigs. This week’s total rig count is down 11 rigs […]
Gibraltar Industries, a leading manufacturer and distributor of products for building markets, saw revenues decrease in Q1 2015 in the industrial and infrastructure product segments. Low oil prices have dampened spending in the oil and gas markets and the strong US dollar has impacted order rates and revenues. Historically, approximately 25-20 percent of revenues for […]