The UAW announced on Friday the ratification of new four-year agreements with both GM and Ford. The GM contract ratification was on hold after the skilled trade membership voted against the tentative agreement despite an overall majority vote for the agreement. Discussions with GM regarding concerns of the skilled trades membership resulted in changes that […]
This week is Thanksgiving (Thursday) and we are one month away from the Christmas Holidays as well. Here is what our publishing schedule will look like over the next five weeks or so. We will publish on Tuesday of this week and then we will not publish again until the following Tuesday, December 1st. We […]
Twice per month Steel Market Update (SMU) canvasses buyers and sellers of flat rolled steels on a wide variety of topics. One area we probe is how they feel about their individual company’s ability to be successful in today’s economy (Current Sentiment) as well as what they think business conditions will look like three to […]
Twice per month, Steel Market Update (SMU) conducts an analysis of the flat rolled steel market from the perspective of active buyers and sellers of sheet and coil products. We invite approximately 560 companies to participate through the use of a questionnaire that we have been using since 2008. One of the areas probed is […]
Total housing starts in October were at an annual rate of 1,060,000 which was the lowest number since March. In October the three month moving average (3MMA) was 1,122,000 which was down from 1,153,000 in September and from 1,160,000 in August. August had the highest 3MMA since the recession so the sky is not falling. […]
Based on the results of this week’s flat rolled steel market analysis (survey) conducted by Steel Market Update (SMU) the flat rolled steel mills continue to aggressively pursue orders by negotiating spot prices on hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and to a slightly lesser extent, Galvalume. As you can see by the graphic shown below, […]
Housing starts fell to a seven month low in October to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.06 million, 11 percent below September’s revised rate of 1.105 million, said the Commerce Department on Wednesday. Economists at Reuters, Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal all anticipated a rate of 1.16 million for the month. Multi-family construction, including […]
The Steel Market Update (SMU) Price MoMo Index for hot rolled steel in the United States was negative (indicating lower prices) for the 15th consecutive week. MoMo, a trailing indicator, is measured as a percentage and shows the relation of the current U.S. hot rolled coil (HRC) price movements against the previous 12-week average spot price […]
A note to our Premium level members, we will have another supplemental issue out tomorrow which will contain our Apparent Excess/Deficit forecast for carbon flat rolled service centers in the United States. We also expect to have our Power Point presentation regarding this week’s flat rolled steel analysis (survey) online by early afternoon. We will […]
For those of you who have been steady readers and members of Steel Market Update you know that the purpose of my Final Thoughts is for me to voice some of my thoughts and opinions on a wide range of topics. I am going to use this forum today to speak about what I am […]
Below is the latest release issued by the the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) regarding residential and commercial heating and cooling equipment shipments through September 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 September 2015 decreased 22.4 percent […]
Our thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by the events in France on Friday evening. Our hope is that the world can use the events of the past few weeks in order to galvanize efforts to ultimately rid those who would prefer the world in Chaos. We have opened registration for our Leadership […]
Although the Dodge Momentum Index has been on a generally upward trend this year, it has been a roller coaster ride. The Index took a large leap of 5.2 percent in September which was nearly reversed by a decline of 4.8 percent in October. Both commercial building and institutional building indexes declined last month by […]
The Steel Market Update (SMU) Price MoMo Index for hot rolled steel in the United States was negative (indicating lower prices) for the 14th consecutive week. MoMo, a trailing indicator, is measured as a percentage and shows the relation of the current U.S. hot rolled coil (HRC) price movements against the previous 12-week average spot price […]
Even though I personally believe steel prices will probably not go too much lower from here, we still have the SMU Price Momentum Indicator pointing toward lower pricing. We are looking for signs that the slide may be about over but, we continue to see weakness on hot rolled products. We got a note from […]
Last week Steel Market Update (SMU) conducted our early November flat rolled steel market analysis. During the two step process we asked our respondents to comment on demand trends, both as a group (step one) and then again when broken out into their various market segments (step two). We ask questions related to demand again […]
I am here in New York City participating in the Cowen & Company Global Metals and Mining Conference. Day one was dedicated to the steel industry and the various commodities (scrap, iron ore, metallurgical coal). I thought I would provide a snapshot into some of the comments made during the conference by various CEO’s. Lourenco […]
The UAW announced the completion of voting for a new labor contract with General Motors. The overall vote was 55.43 percent in favor and 44.57 percent against. Production workers voted for the contract by a 58.3 percent to 41.7 percent margin. Skilled trades, however, voted against the agreement, with 40.5 percent in favor and 59.5 […]
Each month the Commerce Department issues its Construction Put in Place (CPIP) data, usually on the first working day covering activity two months earlier. September data was released on Monday November 2nd. Construction Put in Place is based on spending work as it occurs, estimated for a given month from a sample of projects. In […]
I will be traveling to New York City tomorrow to participate in the Cowen & Company conference for the financial community. I will return to the office on Thursday morning. For those of you keeping up with our move – all of the phones are working properly including our main 800 number (800-432-3475). You are […]
The Steel Market Update (SMU) Steel Buyers Sentiment Index is continuing its downward trend, even though the Current Index is 4 points higher and the Future segment of the Index is 9 points higher than what we reported during the middle of October. The numbers we follow closely are our 3 month moving averages (3MMA) […]
Twice per month, Steel Market Update (SMU) conducts an analysis of the flat rolled steel market from the perspective of active buyers and sellers of sheet and coil products. We invite approximately 560 companies to participate through the use of a questionnaire that we have been using since 2008. One of the areas probed is […]
Our flat rolled steel survey respondents reported the domestic steel mills as willing to negotiate flat rolled steel prices on virtually every product. The results of our flat rolled steel market analysis conducted throughout this week saw 93 percent of our respondents reporting benchmark hot rolled pricing as being negotiable. This is just about the […]
The Steel Market Update (SMU) Price MoMo Index for hot rolled steel in the United States was negative (indicating lower prices) for the 13th consecutive week. MoMo, a trailing indicator, is measured as a percentage and shows the relation of the current U.S. hot rolled coil (HRC) price movements against the previous 12-week average spot price […]
I had an interesting conversation with a former trading company executive who was reflecting on the number of tons of Chinese galvanized steel that hit the U.S. shores in August, September and October 2015. Depending on when the preliminary determination on countervailing duties is published in the Federal Register, the Chinese mills are subject to […]
An explanation of the Key Indicators concept is given at the end of this piece for those readers who are unfamiliar with it. The total number of indicators considered in this analysis is currently 36. Please refer to Table 1 for the view of the present situation and the quantitative measure of trends. Readers should […]
Gibraltar Industries reported net sales increased 30 percent in third quarter 2015 to $305 million. Adjusted net income was $15.7 million compared with $9.5 million in Q3 2014. “Gibraltar delivered strong financial results in the third quarter, as we continued to execute on the value-creation strategy we introduced late last year,” said Chief Executive Officer […]
We made a mistake in our ‘October at a Glance’ table in last Sunday’s newsletter. There was a typo in the SMU cold rolled price, resulting in an error in the average cold rolled price for the month of October. The corrected table is below:
The headline that you are going to read in not only our newsletter but in other publications as well, will be that the US Department of Commerce found evidence of material injury or potential material injury to the U.S. steel industry and therefore is preliminarily imposing countervailing duties on China, Italy, South Korea and India. […]
October was the second month in a row where SMU had our Pricing Momentum Indicator pointing toward lower pricing. SMU reports hot rolled coil, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume pricing every Tuesday evening. During October we produced our steel prices indices four times. HRC was reported at $420 per ton the first Tuesday of the […]