The following article on the hot rolled coil (HRC) and financial futures markets was written by Jack Marshall of Crunch Risk LLC. Here is how Jack saw trading over the past week: The focus in HR this past week has been primarily in Q4’16 and 1H’17. Futures prices have dropped to the psychological $500 level […]
License requests for steel coming from foreign sources are continuing at a pace where steel imports for the month of September will exceed 3 million tons. On Tuesday the U.S. Department of Commerce released the latest license data. The data is indicating a rising trend in total foreign steel imports (all products), hot rolled, cold […]
After making a big move this past week, spot flat rolled steel prices out of the domestic steel mills remained range bound with only minor adjustments as steel buyers try to digest what they need to do next. Steel buyers have been telling Steel Market Update that there is a disparity between the mini mills […]
Late on Thursday evening we received the following letters to the editor, both from executives with flat rolled steel service centers: Great articles tonight, full of very useful info. There was a lot of space dedicated to HR imports, spreads to domestic, etc. With HR having been in excess for some time, it’s not surprising […]
Flat rolled steel prices continued to fall by double digits this past week on all of the steel indexes followed by Steel Market Update. As the pace of the slide has accelerated the spread between the indexes have increased. We have seen this same phenomena in the past which is caused by the differences in […]
Tenaris is recalling workers to its Tenaris Algoma Tubes factory in Sault Ste. Marie. The facility which make seamless pipe for the oil and gas industry has been idle since February 8 due to continued adverse market conditions in the energy sector. Tenaris Algoma Tubes said it will recall 120-150 employees and restart production in […]
The following article on the hot rolled coil (HRC), busheling scrap (BUS), and financial futures markets was written by David Feldstein. As Flack Steel’s director of risk management, Dave is an active participant in the hot rolled coil (HRC) futures market and we believe he will provide insightful commentary and trading ideas to our readers. […]
Scrap prices surprised scrap dealers and have deteriorated more than what was expected going into September negotiations with the domestic steel mills. Here is how one of the national scrap companies portrayed the tone of the negotiations: “As you can imagine, it’s been a hectic time since the return from the holiday last week. As […]
Over the past few weeks the pace of the flat rolled spot price decline has quickened and many buyers believe benchmark hot rolled coil prices are poised to drop below $500 per ton for the first time since mid-April 2015. Or, are they? At this moment, SMU has our HRC index average at $525 per […]
The following calculation is used by Steel Market Update to identify the spread between foreign hot rolled export prices and domestic hot rolled prices. We want our readers to note that we have made a decision to replace SteelBenchmarker as the primary data provider of foreign hot rolled coil prices. We were finding the comparison […]
Whoops, who left the door open? It seems like all the hot air has been sucked out of this steel market, at least for the time being. Flat rolled steel prices have been moving dramatically lower over the past few weeks. Steel buyers are telling SMU that the domestic steel mills are anxious to negotiate, […]
The uncertainty in the market (called the “blahs” by a number of our steel sources) is affecting both buyers and sellers of steel. Steel mills have been doing all that they can in an attempt to keep flat rolled steel prices from slipping too far. One of our mill sources had a sense of humor […]
For the week ending September 10, 2016, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) estimated the U.S. steel industry produced 1,626,000 net tons of raw steel, a 1.8 percent decrease over the previous week and a 3.6 percent decrease over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 69.5 percent, down […]
We don’t think the domestic steel mills would have envisioned winning virtually all of their antidumping (AD) and countervailing duty (CVD) suits and still have foreign steel imports at, or above, 3 million net tons per month. Unfortunately for the domestic mills that is the reality that is sinking into the market (and probably a […]
Manufacturing companies and steel service centers concur about the status of spot steel pricing out of the service centers, spot flat rolled steel prices are dropping. Manufacturing companies reported rising spot prices during the entire second quarter and very early in the third quarter. We saw spot pricing out of the distributors begin to wane […]
Flat rolled steel prices continued their move lower with Platts taking their hot rolled and cold rolled averages down by $10 and $25 per ton, respectively. Steel Market Update (SMU) did not move our hot rolled and cold rolled prices on Tuesday of last week but we did make minor adjustments to galvanized and Galvalume […]
Steel Market Update is reintroducing our monthly analysis of foreign steel imports into the United States by product, port and country. This report will be available to our Premium level members shortly after the U.S. government releases the Final Census data for each month. The data was just released for the month of July, you […]
Licensed data for August was reported by the Steel Import Monitoring System of the US Commerce Department on September 6th. An explanation of the methodology that we at SMU use to analyze the trade data is given at the end of this piece. Total rolled product licensed imports in the single month of August were […]
SMU scrap sources advised ferrous scrap prices have settled in Detroit with prime grades (Busheling and bundles) moving lower by $30 per gross ton and shredded scrap by $20 per gross ton. Dealers had been hoping that a slower flow of feeder stock into the yards coupled with stronger buying by long products mills might […]
The following article on the hot rolled coil (HRC) and financial futures markets was written by Andre Marshall of Crunch Risk LLC. Here is how he saw the financial markets as well as HRC and scrap trading over the past week: The Financial Blah Blah: The U.S has been the bright spot. Just look at […]
According to the latest data released from the U.S. Department of Commerce and the American Iron and Steel Institute, apparent steel supply for the month of July 2016 was 9,095,385 net tons. Apparent steel supply is calculated by adding domestic steel shipments and finished US steel imports, then subtracting total US steel exports. July apparent […]
July steel exports totaled 738,096 net tons (669,590 metric tons), down 9.0 percent over June and down 9.2 percent from July 2015. Total July figures are below the thee month moving average (average of May, June, and July 2016 figures) ans below the twelve month moving average (average of August 2015 through July 2016 data). […]
The American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) released their weekly assessment of the domestic steel mills raw steel production for the week ending September 3, 2016. The AISI reported production as being 1,656,000 net tons with a capacity utilization rate of 70.8 percent. The production rate (based on approximately 50 percent of the industry providing […]
Due to our Steel Summit Conference last week we did not produce our price ranges and averages until Thursday (September 1st). Since then there has been very little movement but we did tweak galvanized and Galvalume numbers slightly. We will be watching to see if the pace of price erosion gains traction from here or […]
Flat rolled steel prices moved lower last week according to the steel indexes followed by Steel Market Update. Our own index saw hot rolled down $30 per ton, cold rolled as being down $10 per ton, galvanized down $20 per ton and Galvalume down $20 per ton. Platts saw their hot rolled average as being […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce announced Final Census data for July foreign steel imports. July imports surprised to the upside at 3,266,049 net tons. At the same time, based on data through the 2nd of September, August imports are trending toward another 3.0 million net ton month. Both July and August saw a surge in […]
Steel Market Update intentionally did not solicit flat rolled steel price information during our Steel Summit Conference which was held on Monday through Wednesday of this week. Today, as we canvassed the market, we found a significant reduction in prices on all products. We heard reports of “slab rollings” at, or slightly below, $500 per […]
The following article on the hot rolled coil (HRC), busheling scrap (BUS), and financial futures markets was written by David Feldstein. As Flack Steel’s director of risk management, Dave is an active participant in the hot rolled coil (HRC) futures market and we believe he will provide insightful commentary and trading ideas to our readers. […]
For the week ending August 27, 2016, the American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) estimated the U.S. steel industry produced 1,642,000 net tons of raw steel, a 0.8 percent decrease over the previous week and a 4.9 percent decrease over the same week one year ago. The estimated capacity utilization rate is 70.2 percent, down […]
Tuesday is normally the day that Steel Market Update puts out our price ranges and averages on hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized and Galvalume steels. As many of you know we are in the midst of our Steel Summit Conference in Atlanta. Due to our antitrust guidelines we did not feel it appropriate to discuss […]