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 […]
Our next Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals workshop will be held in the Columbus, Mississippi area on January 19 and 20, 2016. This workshop will include a tour of the SDI Columbus steel mill. We are working on hotel information right now and hope to have the hotel selected by early […]
Does the U.S. Steel purchase of the former Stelco facility (Hamilton and Lake Erie Works) rank up there with the Severstal and later RG Steel purchase of the former Sparrows Point, Wheeling-Pittsburgh and Warren facilities? I remember Saikat Day, who was the CEO of Severstal NA at the time, when speaking to our 2014 Steel […]
Buyers and sellers of steel continued to be optimistic about business but less so than a few months ago. Since then Sentiment has been trending lower as the strain of ever lower steel prices, issues regarding demand, lower commodity prices and shrinking margins due to high inventory levels are affecting both buyers and sellers. Today […]
Flat rolled steel mill lead times remain historically short as the domestic mills struggle to keep their mills full. Based on the results from this week’s flat rolled steel market analysis (survey) we are seeing lead times at least one week shorter than this time last year on all products with the exception of Galvalume. […]
With the short lead times (referenced in another article in tonight’s issue) the mills have little choice but to negotiate pricing with their customers as every order counts. Each of the flat rolled products followed by Steel Market Update are being reported, almost unanimously, that the mills are working with their customers. The graphic below […]
The Steel Market Update (SMU) Price MoMo Index for hot rolled steel in the United States was negative (indicating lower prices) for the eighth 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 […]
The first rule of business travel is don’t book the last flight of the day to your end destination – especially when you have a three hour ride to the airport and, guess what, the last 20 miles are in Chicago rush hour traffic… My thanks to Mario Briccetti (Steel 101 instructor) who imitated another […]
Today, the Department of Commerce announced its final determinations in the antidumping and countervailing duty investigations on imports of welded pipe from Korea and Turkey. The DOC determined that imports of welded line pipe from Korea and Turkey have been sold in the United States at dumping margins ranging from 2.53 percent to 6.19 percent […]
The 12 countries of the Trans-Pacific Partnership have finally reached accord on an agreement after more than five years of intensive negotiations, effectively creating the world’s largest free trade zone. US Trade Representative Michael Froman said in an announcement that the agreement will “support jobs, drive sustainable growth, foster inclusive development and promote innovation across […]
I, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush and a number of steel people are all in Davenport, Iowa enjoying the warmer than normal weather and great conditions to do a mill tour which is exactly what we did this afternoon (without Hillary and Jeb). I want to thank everyone at SSAB for their hospitality and for doing […]
I recently had dinner with the owner of a Midwest based flat rolled steel service center. During the course of the conversation the subject of steel sales and, specifically, the development of new sales leads came up. I am sure this is a topic that many service center managers reflect upon on an almost daily […]
One of the reasons SMU decided to go with an App for our Steel Summit Conference this year was the belief that the App was something that could be used prior to the conference as well as after the conference. For example, earlier today I was working on developing scrap information in relationship to iron […]
The Steel Market Update (SMU) Price MoMo Index for hot rolled steel in the United States was negative (indicating lower prices) for the eighth 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 spent part of my day today speaking to buyers who are known to buy foreign steel either due to logistics reasons (too far away from a producing mill) or who prefer to have options for pricing reasons. What I found out is a number of countries involved in the trade suits continue to quote […]
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 […]
U.S. Congressman Pete Visclosky (D) addressed the International Trade Commission (ITC) hearing on cut-to-length carbon steel plate today, calling for the ITC to maintain the existing antidumping orders on cut-to-length steel plate from China, and the suspension agreements from Russia and Ukraine. “As a representative and resident of Northwest Indiana, one of our nation’s foremost […]
Over the course of this past week Steel Market Update (SMU) conducted our flat rolled steel market analysis. Part of that analysis was focused on the domestic steel mill lead times for new orders placed last week for future delivery. We follow lead times as they are one of the early key indicators as to […]
According to the respondents to our recent flat rolled steel questionnaire concluded this past week, U.S. and Canadian steel mills continue to entertain adjusting (or negotiating) prices on hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume steels. The percentage of respondents who reported hot rolled pricing as negotiable dropped from 97 percent to 78 percent. Cold […]
Twice per month, Steel Market Update conducts a flat rolled steel market analysis which is done in the form of a survey. The survey is done through Survey Monkey online and then evaluated by SMU. Once we have crunched the numbers they are put into spread sheets and then a good portion of the data […]
We will be in Iowa next week for one of our Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals workshops. We are looking forward to working with SSAB again, as we did a workshop in Mobile, Alabama and toured their Alabama facility. This is our first trip to Iowa. We are working on ironing […]
Flat rolled steel prices have been dropping lately and Steel Market Update (SMU) can no longer ignore the direction of market prices at this time. We are, therefore, adjusting our Price Momentum Indicator to Lower from Neutral, meaning that our expectation is for prices to move lower over the next 30 days. There are a […]
Flat rolled steel buyers and sellers are less enthusiastic about their company’s ability to be successful in both the current and future (three to six months into the future) market conditions. The SMU Steel Buyers Sentiment Index (Current) is being reported as +47, down 6 points over one month ago and well below the +64 […]
The Steel Market Update (SMU) Price MoMo Index for hot rolled steel in the United States was negative (indicating lower prices) for the seventh 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 […]
The following press release came out late this afternoon and we caught it early this evening. The announcement is about the hot rolled trade cases and whether the US International Trade Commission (ITC) found enough evidence to determine that the probability exists that the U.S. steel industry was “materially damaged” by hot rolled exports from […]
Last week we reported on a change in the cold rolled antidumping/countervailing duty scope language that has created some concern within the manufacturing community. The concern is related to changes which resulted in this being added to the scope language: “Subject merchandise includes cold-rolled steel that has been further processed in a third country, including […]
We finally got our Flat Rolled Steel Service Center Apparent Excess/Deficit Inventory forecast model back on track. As we mentioned last month, SMU had been operating under a much more optimistic frame of mind and this past month we pulled back on our expectations and by doing so we came very close to nailing both […]