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 […]
Last week was a very busy week, not only for the steel mills and their customers as they try to determine exactly where steel prices are going to go from here, but also for Steel Market Update. We produced our early May flat rolled steel market analysis (survey) and posted the results online for our […]
Buyers and sellers of flat rolled steel continue to be optimistic about their company’s ability to be successful both now and into the future. However, Steel Market Update has been seeing small adjustments lower to both our current and future Sentiment Indices. Future Sentiment, which measures how buyers and sellers feel about their company’s ability […]
This week the Steel Market Update Price MoMo Index for flat rolled steel in the U.S. is showing hot rolled coil price momentum continuing its downward trend for the 37th week in a row. MoMo, a trailing indicator, is measured as a percentage and shows the relation of the current hot rolled coil (HRC) price […]
I had an interesting email from one of our members who expressed an issue with the reduction of articles written by me. Here is a portion of the email, “When we first subscribed to your publication several years ago, we found that John P was doing most of the writing and he would stick his […]
Each month the Commerce Department issues its Construction Put in Place (CPIP) data, usually on the first working day covering activity two months earlier. March data was released on May 1st. Construction Put in Place is based on spending work as it occurs, estimated for a given month from a sample of projects. In effect […]
US automotive sales finished April at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 16.4 million. Sales were slightly below expectations but still the highest April sales level since 2006. Sales volume for the month was at 1.448 million units, according to WardsAuto, a gain of 4.9 percent y/y. Light trucks and CUVs continued to lead sales […]
According to Baker Hughes data from May 1st, 2015, the U.S rig count for the week was 905 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. The last time the active U.S. count was this low was back on June 19, 2009 at 899 rigs. This week’s total rig count is down 27 rigs […]
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 […]
Late last week AK Steel announced a $20 per ton price increase which matches the original increase announcement out of ArcelorMittal. As the week ended, the big mill missing from the charge at higher prices was U.S. Steel. The only mill to stick its neck out there and put specific base price levels on their […]
Steel Market Update spent time over the past few days speaking with trading companies and customers who buy foreign steel to see if the flow of orders has subsided or remains in place. We were especially interested in cold rolled and coated products (galvanized and Galvalume in particular) since so much has been made about […]