Category: Final Thoughts

Sheet prices are getting back into very lofty territory. That’s assuming you can find spot tons available for the balance of 2023 – and some of you say you can’t.

The first rule of Steel 101 is that you’re free to talk about Steel 101. We actually encourage it. Last week on Tuesday and Wednesday, SMU’s Steel 101 was held in Mt. Pleasant, S.C.

I wrote on Sunday that it could be a busy week for steel. It has been.

Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” could be the theme song for the sheet market over the last month. A UAW strike? Shake it off. The lowest ABI since December 2020? Shake it off. A potentially widening conflict in the Middle East? Shake it off. Sheet prices have been rising since late September, and hot-rolled coil […]

This week could be a big one for steel, or at least for the steel rumor mill. For starters, there is renewed speculation that an announcement about the U.S. Steel sales process could be in the works. The rumor mill is also churning fast when it comes to the duration of the UAW strike and […]

US sheet mills launched a coordinated push to increase sheet prices for the first time since June.

If you think prices will continue to rise, you might point to longer lead times and stable order entry.

SMU’s latest survey data are out, and they reflect a consensus among steel buyers that sheet prices have bottomed out and might rebound. Lead times continue to extend. Fewer sheet and plate mills are willing to negotiate lower spot prices. And 70% of survey respondents think prices have already bottomed out or will later this […]

The sheet market appears poised for a rebound if you’re looking at the indicators we typically track.

Sheet prices remain on an upward trend. Many of you expect that to remain the case - assuming that the UAW strike doesn’t drag on much longer.

A service center executive recently told me that the best way to make a fool of yourself was to try to predict what flat-rolled steel prices were going to do. He hadn’t expected that hot-rolled coil prices would rebound from less than $600 per ton ($30 per cwt) for some larger buyers to potentially more […]

The US steel market appears to have gone from despairing over the possibility of spot HRC prices slipping into the $500s per ton to worrying about spot availability – and in just a matter of 2-3 weeks.

Did the price increase announced by Cleveland-Cliffs last week stick? Yes, at least partially.

Will the sheet price hike announced by Cleveland-Cliffs (and quietly followed by at least some mills) stick?

I didn’t see the Cleveland-Cliffs price increase coming on Wednesday. And I didn’t expect to see a target base price of $750 per ton ($37.50 per cwt) for hot-rolled coil. But I’ve since heard that other mills, even if they hadn’t publicly announced anything, had been quietly raising prices before Cliffs publicized its increase. Are […]

Sheet prices declined less than usual this week. Does that mean we’re nearing a bottom, or is it just a pause before the market moves lower yet again?

We’ve been busier than usual lately covering two major events (in addition to our pricing and data services) – the potential sale of U.S. Steel and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union strike. Let’s review some possible developments in each. U.S. Steel Sale – Back in the Headlines We learned last week that Stelco had […]

A big "thank you" to Wolfe Research and Timna Tanners for organizing a lunch in today in Chicago with a group of steel industry participants and investors.

Sheet prices fell again this week, this time not on fears of a United Auto Workers (UAW) union strike but on the actual thing.

The United Auto Workers (UAW) strike that started Friday leaves the Detroit 3 automakers—and it’s union-represented workers—in uncharted territory.

SMU Managing Editor Michael Cowden shares his Final Thoughts for the week on what happens to steel if the United Auto Workers (UAW) launch a series of “stand up” strikes at midnight tonight against Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis?

Sheet prices have fallen to their lowest point of the year - just below $700 per ton ($35 per cwt) when it comes to hot-rolled coil (HRC).

The more of you I talk to, the more the question seems to be not whether the United Auto Workers (UAW) will strike later this week but instead for how long. You’re also asking whether the UAW will target one union-represented automaker or whether it might take the unprecedented step of walking out at Ford, […]

We’re just a week away from a potential United Auto Workers (UAW) strike against one, or potentially all three, union-represented automakers. The latest turn of the screw: UAW President Shawn Fain said an offer from Detroit-based General Motors was “insulting.”

The spot market remains quiet on fears of a potential United Auto Workers (UAW) union strike late next week.

Some of you may remember when the year “2000” seemed like the distant future.

We’re roughly a week removed from the 2023 Steel Summit and some of the discussions, both on stage and the the sidelines of the event, remain of critical importance to many in the industry.

I headed back to the Atlanta airport after Steel Summit in 2022 hoping to catch up with a few colleagues and contacts only to learn that Cleveland-Cliffs had just announced a price hike. So, I set everything aside, opened up my laptop, and filed a short article about the $75-per-ton ($3.75-per-cwt) price increase from a […]

I learned a lot at Steel Summit this year. More than I can do justice to in one column. Below are four things that have stayed with me after the conference closed on Wednesday afternoon. Another, as I highlighted earlier this week, was electricity – who gets it, and which energy sources we use. 1. […]

At every Steel Summit, a few themes seem to emerge that I didn’t anticipate. In 2021, I remember the theme being that scrap would be the next precious metal. (And also that Cleveland-Cliffs planned to expand in to the scrap market.) This year, I expected that there would be a lot of discussion about decarbonization. What I didn’t entirely expect was that we’d be talking so much about electricity and power generation.