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 Much like the corrosion resistant case that preceded the hot rolled filing which was originally made in August […]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. […]
On Friday, October 30, 2015, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced their Preliminary Determination that critical circumstances existed on corrosion resistant steels from certain mills in the Peoples Republic of China (China), South Korea (Korea), Italy and Taiwan. Critical circumstances were not found for any company from India and only ILVA was identified from Italy. […]
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 […]
I am aware that on October 23, 2015 the domestic steel mills filed allegations of critical circumstances on exports of hot rolled coil from four countries: Brazil, Australia, Japan and The Netherlands. I will have more details and statements from both buyers and sellers later this week. I wanted to spend time studying the affirmative […]
The Steel Market Update (SMU) Price MoMo Index for hot rolled steel in the United States was negative (indicating lower prices) for the 12th 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 […]
After three days of non-stop packaging followed by 24 hours of non-stop cleaning we have finally departed our Georgia offices and are in transit (as I write) to our new location in Florida. It is a two day trip so if you call our office you may get a voice mail message – my apologies […]
It is Tuesday evening and I continue to multi-task as the moving company shows up at 8 AM on Wednesday and after 15 years in the same location there is much to do to get ready for the move. For those that did not catch my note about this in the last issue, Steel Market […]
Last week Steel Market Update conducted our mid-October flat rolled steel market analysis. We invited almost 600 companies to participate in our questionnaire which is focused on tracking trends affecting flat rolled steel buyers and users. In our opinion, one of the most valuable pieces of information coming out of our market analysis is the […]
As a Premium level member (or free trial) Steel Market Update provides access to a large portion of the flat rolled steel market survey results we generate twice per month throughout the year. We feel this is a key piece to your Premium membership and we want to make sure that you are taking advantage […]
The difference between auto industry and steel industry: the UAW has issue a notice to GM that they could walk out at midnight tonight (Sunday) if they don’t have a contract. The USW is content to work under the old contract for as long as they can get away with it since both US Steel […]
Business conditions affecting manufactures and flat rolled steel service centers are expected to be more challenging based on the SMU Steel Buyers Sentiment Index released today. Buyers, sellers and those associated with the flat rolled steel industry were less optimistic than what we had been seeing over the past 27 months. Our Current Sentiment Index, […]
Buyers and sellers of flat rolled steel are reporting average lead times on hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume steels as being essentially unchanged from what we reported at the beginning of the month. However, when looking at the graphic below you can clearly see lead times have been in decline since the early […]
SMU spoke with a service center executive earlier today. During our conversion this Midwest based service center expressed his opinion regarding the ability to negotiate domestic steel prices in the current market environment when he told us, “I am beginning to think that with a firm bid you could get a better deal domestically than […]
The Steel Market Update (SMU) Price MoMo Index for hot rolled steel in the United States was negative (indicating lower prices) for the eleventh 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 […]
Boxes are piled high around me as we begin to pack up our office for the move south to our new headquarters in Florida. Excuse our mess as we are trying our best. We had a good response to our latest flat rolled steel market analysis which was conducted via an online questionnaire over the […]
A reminder, if you received an email invitation to participate in our flat rolled market analysis please click on the link contained in the message. The questionnaire won’t take more than a few minutes to complete and at the end of the week we will have a Power Point presentation for all of those who […]
SMU was disappointed in two key data sets which were released this past week. The first was the MSCI service center shipment and inventories which indicated a weakening economy and a continuation of the high inventory levels at the U.S. distributors. The second was the import license data through the first 15 days of October […]
The Metal Service Center Institute (MSCI) released September shipments and inventories for U.S. distributors. We reported in Thursday evening’s issue that flat rolled steel shipments were weaker than expected while receipts were higher than expected. The combination of the two has driven our Apparent Excess to over 1 million net tons. The SMU Flat Rolled […]
We will begin our next flat rolled steel market analysis with an invitation to participate in our questionnaire going out at 8 AM on Monday morning. If you receive an invite please take a few minutes to click on the link and complete the questionnaire. Steel Market Update will be moving our headquarters over the […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce has postponed the Preliminary Determination of the Corrosion Resistant antidumping trade suit (CORE) filed against India, Italy, China, South Korea and Taiwan. Commerce has delayed the announcement by 41 days, to December 21, 2015. The Federal Register published the details about the postponement which was due to the case being […]
The Steel Market Update (SMU) Price MoMo Index for hot rolled steel in the United States was negative (indicating lower prices) for the tenth 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 […]
As I was sitting at my desk this evening (around 8 PM ET) thinking about what I was going to write about in my Final Thoughts article, I flipped over to my second computer screen to look at the U.S. Department of Commerce site dealing with foreign steel imports. The site is normally updated every […]
There are two groups of people who get access to a good portion of our flat rolled steel market analysis which is conducted by Steel Market Update twice per month. The two groups are: the people who participate in our research and our Premium level members. We believe our analysis is superior to others which […]