SMU Service Center Apparent Excess The Metal Service Center Institute (MSCI) released U.S. steel distributor shipments and inventories earlier today. We have a separate article which goes into detail in both flat and long products in this newsletter. This article focuses on our flat rolled steel Service Center Inventory Apparent Excess/Deficit forecast for the month […]
As the publisher of Steel Market Update I get a lot of questions on a daily basis from readers and those who come across our website. Usually its about a piece of data or something having to do with one of our workshops. I got a question yesterday from someone who wanted to know what […]
A little more than two weeks have passed since Steel Market Update adjusted our forward looking Price Momentum Indicator from “Lower” to “Neutral.” Looking back on the historical trend for flat rolled steel Price Momentum you have to go back a year before you would see our Price Momentum Indicator pointing toward “Higher” flat rolled […]
For those of you who are interested the Metal Service Center Institute (MSCI) shipment and inventory data is scheduled to be released tomorrow (Wednesday). We will have a full report for our Executive members in Thursday’s issue and our Apparent Excess and Price Forecast and another more detailed report for our Premium level members later […]
This past week Steel Market Update publisher, John Packard, spoke to the financial community about the flat rolled steel industry. Most of the questions received during the Cowen & Company conference call were associated with demand for steel products. Since SMU just concluded our early April flat rolled steel market analysis (survey) late last week, […]
During my conference call with Cowen & Company and their customers last week I mentioned that I thought we could see a domestic mill price increase by the middle of May. My reasoning is inventories should begin to drop at the service center level and many of the end users want to tie up steel […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) has two Steel Buyers Sentiment Indices, current and future. We normally concentrate our initial comments on the current index, how buyers and sellers of steel feel about business conditions and their company’s ability to be successful in the current market. However, today and going forward, we will begin focusing on how […]
This week Steel Market Update (SMU) conducted our early April flat rolled steel market survey. Based on the results of our inquiries we learned that domestic mill lead times continue to be quite short and well below the lead times seen one year ago. However, when looking at last year’s lead times, we must remember […]
According to our survey respondents not much has changed when it comes to how willing steel mills are to negotiate hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume steel pricing. Lead times continue to remain short and order books weak. This has created a situation whereby steel mills have to be competitively priced in order to […]
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 33rd 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 […]
We have an article in tonight’s Steel Market Update about a service center which installed a new piece of processing equipment. Earlier today we posted on our website blog an article about Olympic Steel naming Andrew Wolfort general manager of their Schaumburg plant. We are interested in keeping the industry informed of these kinds of […]
SurveyMonkey.com handles our flat rolled steel market analysis (surveys) and sends out invitations twice per month. They have made some changes to the way they send out the surveys and the way you access the questionnaire. If you normally get a invitation and have not seen it please check your SPAM folder as it is […]
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 32nd 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 […]
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 […]
A reminder to our readers that we will not be publishing our Steel Market Update newsletter on Sunday due to the Easter Holiday. We will go back to our normal publishing schedule on Tuesday, April 7th. Our offices will be open on Friday and Monday and we can be reached at: 800-432-3475 or by email: […]
A note to those interested in attending our Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals workshop in May. The workshop is about 50 percent fully registered at this time. The location is Merriville, Indiana just outside of Chicago. Our mill tour will be of the NLMK Indiana electric arc furnace (EAF) plant which […]
This will be an interesting week as we watch to see how the negotiations between the domestic steel mills and their suppliers end. Expectations are mixed. Late last week we received a note from one of the larger scrap companies in the U.S. They told us, “Generally speaking, obsolete scrap flows have remained tepid in […]
Earlier today, Steel Market Update adjusted our SMU Price Momentum Indicator from “Lower” to “Neutral.” Since November 16, 2014 the SMU Price Momentum Indicator has been pointing toward “Lower” steel prices. Prior to November 16th we had a period of time where our Momentum Indicator vacillated between Neutral and Lower going back to May 2014. […]
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 31st 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 […]
So, why haven’t we released our program for the upcoming Steel Summit Conference in Atlanta on September 1 & 2, 2015? Well, we are waiting until we have all of our keynote speakers confirmed and committed. We believe we will have an exceptional program once again this year. As we have in the past, our […]
Last week a number of the large Chinese steel mills who have offices in the United States met to discuss the pressures being placed on the Chinese mills by both the Chinese central government and the U.S. government to control (reduce) the amount of steel being exported to the United States. SMU heard over the […]
One of the most import keys being watched by buyers and sellers of flat rolled steel are the steel mill lead times on hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume products. Lead times, which are the amount of time it takes to get material produced once a purchase order is placed, have been running “short” […]
Based on the results from our most recent flat rolled steel market analysis which we conducted this past week, manufacturing companies and service centers reported domestic (USA and Canada) steel mills as willing to negotiate pricing on hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume steel coils. As you can see by the graphic shared below, […]
I want to take a moment to welcome our newest members to Steel Market Update. I want to remind all of our members that we encourage comments, questions and suggestions. Many of our best articles are done in response to questions being asked of us by the active steel community. We find if one person […]
Those involved in the flat rolled steel industry continue to be optimistic about their company’s ability to be successful both in the current market environment as well as three to six months into the future. The SMU Steel Buyers Sentiment Index (current market) is being reported at +53. This is four points higher than two […]
Not to toot our own horn too loudly, we came within a whisker of nailing both shipments and inventories in our last Service Center Inventory Apparent Excess/Deficit forecast. In our last forecast we indicated flat rolled shipments would be 2,253,000 tons and based on the MSCI data released earlier this week the actual number was […]
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 30th 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 […]
Any of you out there feeling like the beat of the anti-import drums are once again beating harder and harder. So, what happens if the Chinese steel mills decide to “voluntarily” reduce or allocate their export tonnage to the United States? First, would they try to allocate at existing tonnage levels (which are quite high) […]
I want to shout out to all of the people who worked on tonight’s newsletter as this has been a particularly hectic day for me due to my travel schedule. Brett Linton and Sandy Williams both did great jobs (as usual) as they bounced from subject to subject and article to article. Peter Wright continues […]
We will begin a new flat rolled steel market analysis (survey) on Monday morning at 8 AM ET. There are lots of questions which are unanswered and we want to probe your thoughts on the subject. As I mentioned, invites to the survey will be sent out at 8 AM ET. If you receive an […]