My hectic travel schedule continues as I go to Chicago on Monday afternoon as we will be conducting our new Managing Price Risk II: Strategies and Execution workshop on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. The workshop instructor is Andre Marshall, CEO of Crunchrisk and one of our speakers at this year’s Steel Summit Conference […]
U.S. light vehicle sales increased in May to nearly 16.8 million units at a seasonally adjusted annual rate, (SAAR) up from an average of 15.8 million units in the first five months of 2014 and the strongest rate since February 2007. Light vehicles are autos and light trucks (GVW Classes 1-3, under 14,001 lbs.). Automotive […]
Figure 1 shows historical gas and oil prices since January 2000. West Texas Intermediate closed at $107.08 and Brent at $115.19 on June 19th. In 10 days prior to the 19th WTI increased by $1.99 and Brent by $4.64 as the ISIS situation in Iraq increased market uncertainty. Oil and gas prices have both been […]
The fact that steel prices have been moderating and, in some cases, moving lower has not dented the enthusiasm buyers and sellers of flat rolled steel are showing based on the Steel Market Update Steel Buyers Sentiment Index. The latest market analysis is pegging Sentiment at +57, up 3 points from our last measurement conducted […]
The Steel Market Update Price MoMo Index for flat rolled steel in the U.S turned negative this week after being in positive territory for the previous ten weeks. MoMo, a trailing indicator, is measured as a percentage and shows the relation of the current hot rolled coil (HRC) price movements against the previous 12-week average […]
I am going to start off today’s final thoughts with a shout out to one of our own, John Temples, who recently was interviewed by a Michigan Business Network radio station about Steel Market Update. You can listen to a replay of the interview by clicking on this link. For our Premium Level members, be […]
Total housing starts declined from 1,071,000 in April to 1,001,000 in May but the three month moving average (3MMA) increased from 983,000 in April to 1,007,000 in May. It looks as though April was a bounce back from the severe winter delays and that May reverted to trend. Figure 1 shows total housing starts from […]
Hello from New York City. If you are in the steel industry and you have never attended a Steel Success Strategies conference (or been a lobby rat hanging out in the hotel lobby and talking to people as they pass in and out of the hotel) then you need to do it at least one […]
Below is a release published by the the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) on residential and commercial shipments of water heaters, warm air furnaces, central air conditioners, and air-source heat pumps during the month of April. Residential Storage Water Heaters U.S. shipments of residential gas storage water heaters for April 2014 decreased 1.9 percent, […]
We have all been through them – the dreaded “Lobby Call” – that impersonal sales call in the office of a potential steel buyer in the hope of being able to spend a few moments of quality time and, instead, the interaction between salesman and buyer is relegated to the lobby of the company. The […]
According to Baker Hughes data from June 13th, 2014, the U.S rig count for this past week was 1,854 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This count is a decrease of 6 rigs when compared to the prior week, with oil rigs up 6 to 1,542 rigs, gas rigs down 10 to […]
By the time this newsletter is published I will be in New York City which by Monday afternoon will be crawling with steel and related industry people. There are a number of conferences, meetings and dinners surrounding the Steel Success Strategies conference which will be held during the first few days of this week. I […]
The Steel Market Update Price MoMo Index for flat rolled steel in the U.S was positive this week for the tenth week in a row after being in negative territory for the prior ten weeks. MoMo, a trailing indicator, is measured as a percentage and shows the relation of the current hot rolled coil (HRC) […]
If you are in any way involved with analyzing risk within your company I have two suggestions: 1) Sign up for the Armada Executive Intelligence Brief and, 2) Come to our Steel Summit Conference in September when Dr. Chris Kuehl, one of the Managing Directors and founders of Armada Corporate Intelligence, will address our conference. […]
A short note to let our Premium Level members know that our Steel Market Update survey results are online and can be accessed on the website. If you need assistance accessing any of the Premium products on our website please let me or Brett@SteelMarketUpdate.com know and we will help you. We are also sharing this […]
Those of you who know me understand that during my steel sales career I not only worked in the service center segment of the industry but I also represented a domestic steel mill and, during the last five years of my career I also represented two trading companies who were selling foreign steel into the […]
SMU Price Momentum Indicator Adjusted to Lower from Neutral: Steel Market Update conducted our early June flat rolled steel market analysis this past week. The results of our survey, coupled with information being gathered independently of our survey have prompted SMU to revise our SMU Price Momentum Indicator to Lower from Neutral. We now believe […]
From time to time Steel Market Update writes an article that seems to touch the collective nerve of the steel community. A number of our articles which we have published under the “Steel Buyers Basics” title fit in that category. The article we have shared with both our Steel Market Update members as well as […]
Building permit values in Canada rose 1.1 percent to $6.0 billion in April following two months of decline. Building intentions for the residential sector offset the decline in nonresidential. Commercial sector permit values fell 14.8 percent to $1.3 billion in April. The decline followed a 0.3 percent gain the previous month and put commercial permit […]
According to Baker Hughes data from June 6th, 2014, the U.S rig count for this week is 1,860 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This count is a decrease of 6 rigs when compared to last week, with oil rigs unchanged at 1,536 rigs, gas rigs down 6 to 320 rigs, and […]
A note to remind you that we have a few spots left for our new Managing Price Risk II: Strategies & Execution workshop which will be held in Chicago at the CME Building at 20 South Wacker Drive. The workshop will be conducted over two days: June 24 & 25th. Our instructor will be Andre […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) Steel Buyers Sentiment Index is at +54 this week and continues to be well within the optimistic range for the index. Even though the index dropped 8 points from the all-time high recorded during the middle of May, the growing optimistic trend continues as our three month moving average improved to […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) Steel Buyers Sentiment Index is at +54 this week and continues to be well within the optimistic range for the index. Even though the index dropped 8 points from the all-time high recorded during the middle of May, the growing optimistic trend continues as our three month moving average improved to […]
According to the results of our latest flat rolled steel market survey just completed earlier today, mill lead times are slowly beginning to move in (get shorter) on almost all products followed by Steel Market Update. Our respondents reported shorter lead times on hot rolled which were at 4.91 weeks on the 15th of May […]
As mentioned in the article on steel mill lead times included in this newsletter, we tend to see steel mills as more willing to negotiate steel prices as order books begin to get leaner and lead times begin to shrink. We are seeing some retrenchment of lead times and, at the same time, our recent […]
The Steel Market Update Price MoMo Index for flat rolled steel in the U.S was positive this week for the 9th week in a row after being in negative territory for the prior 10 weeks. MoMo, a trailing indicator, is measured as a percentage and shows the relation of the current hot rolled coil (HRC) […]
I was asked a number of times today – in a couple of different ways – why Steel Market Update has not adjusted our Price Momentum Indicator from Neutral where it has been for about one month to Lower. The reality is we have been watching spot flat rolled pricing quite closely to see at […]
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 at present is thirty five, the Chicago Fed Mid-West Manufacturing Index is still on hold to enable the staff to complete a major re-vamp of the […]
Each month the Commerce Department issues its construction put in place (CPIP) data on the first working day covering activity two months earlier. April data was released on June 2nd. Total Construction: Data is reported on both a seasonally adjusted and non-adjusted basis. In the SMU analysis we consider only the non-adjusted data and remove […]
For those of you who are paying attention to our website you might have noticed we added a new sub-menu under the Resources tab. The new menu is called “The Truth About Selling Steel” and we have attempted to split out those articles associated with sales from our Steel Buyers Basics series of articles many […]