For our U.S. customers, welcome back from the Thanksgiving Holiday. We are a little more than three weeks from our next break for the Christmas and New Year Holidays. Then we plow into 2016 and my gut tells me by then things may begin to change. We still have our SMU Price Momentum Indicator pointing […]
Recently, US Steel CEO Mario Longhi was quoted as saying that a Section 201 investigation may be needed to save the domestic steel industry. We want our readers to learn more about what a Section 201 means so we enlisted the help of trade attorney Lewis Leibowitz who was actively involved in the last Section […]
Tonight’s issue should have plenty of “meat on the bone” for everyone to read and re-read over the Thanksgiving Holidays. Due to the Holidays we will not publish our Thursday and Sunday evening issues. Our next full issue will be Tuesday, December 1st. However, as always, if news breaks that we feel needs your attention […]
Last week Steel Market Update conducted our mid-November flat rolled steel market analysis. We invited slightly less than 600 individuals representing more than 550 companies to participate. Of those responding 44 percent were connected to manufacturing companies, 41 percent with service centers/wholesalers, 7 percent with trading companies, 4 percent with steel mills, 3 percent with […]
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 […]
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, […]
Brazil is studying a proposal to raise import tariffs on steel goods said Brazilian Finance Minister Joaquim Levy following a hearing of the Economic Affairs Committee of the Senate. The measures would protect the local steel industry which has been vocal in its demand for a rate hike. No details on specific products or rates […]
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 […]
This article was originally published in Steel Market Update newsletter dated November 15, 2015. We provide our members up to date analysis of the status of antidumping and countervailing duty trade cases affecting the flat rolled and plate steel markets. Trade protection is a driving concern for the U.S. steel industry that has seen prices […]
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 […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) is constantly being asked to provide details as to the status of the hot rolled, cold rolled and corrosion resistant (CORE) antidumping and countervailing duty trade suits. This article is a follow up to an earlier article originally published on August 18, 2015. The real action is beginning with the US […]
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 […]
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 […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce announced Preliminary Determinations on countervailing duties (CVD) for corrosion resistant steels from Italy (affirmative), China (affirmative), India (affirmative) and Korea (affirmative). There was one country, Taiwan, which was found to not be subject to countervailing duties. You will notice that there are a number of steel mills/exporters that were hit […]
On October 23, 2015 attorneys for the domestic steel mills alleged that exports from Brazil, Australia, Japan and the Netherlands surged into the United States in an effort to “…avoid the imposition of antidumping and countervailing duties.” Much like the corrosion resistant case that preceded the hot rolled filing which was originally made in August […]
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 […]
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. […]