Three mills are out this week attempting to dump steel quickly in the marketplace at $560-$580 per ton. The lead mill is known to do this just prior to announcing a price increase. SMU is being told the mills are asking for large block tons of hot rolled in order to book at these levels. […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Housing starts rose at the fastest pace since 2008, showing continued recovery in the housing market. The Commerce Department said housing starts were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 954,000, up 12.1 percent from the revised November estimate and up 36.9 percent from the December rate in 2011. Starts of […]
Written by: Sandy Williams At least eight new steel plants are under construction in Asia (not including India) that will increase the annual output capacity of steel in Asia by 100 million tonnes within the next few years. Currently China accounts for nearly 50 percent of global steel demand with its own annual output capacity […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Metal forming companies are expecting a spike in business conditions in the next three months according to survey data released Wednesday by the Precision Metalforming Association (PMA). Survey data shows 32 percent of participants are expecting conditions to get better in the next three months (up from 22 percent in December) […]
Written by: Brett Linton Utilizing a trailing average hot rolled coil (HRC) price, the SMU Price MoMo Index for flat rolled steel in the U.S. fell below zero percent this week for the first week after eight consecutive weeks of positive momentum readings. MoMo is based upon the current hot rolled coil price weighed against […]
Written by: Sophia Fain A. M. Castle & Co. announced restructuring plans to improve annual operating profit by $33 million once fully implemented in 2013. Changes to its metals business include an organizational restructuring, warehouse realignments and performance improvement programs. “This broad, performance-enhancing plan will enable us to better serve our customers by organizing our […]
Canadian steel service centers shipped a total of 338,600 tons (all products) during the month of December 2012 – this represents a decline of 19.3 percent compared to last year (not adjusted, 16 percent seasonally adjusted) when the Canadian distributors shipped 419,500 tons. At the end of December, Canadian distributors ended the month with 1,832,800 […]
Exports at lowest levels since February 2011
Written by: Andre Marshall, Crunchrisk LLC Financial Markets On the equities markets we hit a new 5 year high reaching 1485 on SP 500 today. In this current rally you might recall our target point for this move is 1488 and so we may be near a point for a little retracement. If this current move […]
U.S. distributors grew annual shipments by 1.81 percent (all products) according to Metal Service Center Institute data during calendar year 2012. Shipments totaled 41,447,900 tons. Flat rolled shipments also rose during 2012 totaling 26,378,900 tons which represents an improvement of 2.39 percent over the previous year. Plate shipments were up by 2 percent, while pipe […]
The Metal Service Center Institute (MSCI) released service center shipment and inventory data for the month of December on Wednesday of this week. For total steel products, shipments were down slightly to 136,900 tons per day compared to 140,800 tons per day last year. On a seasonally adjusted basis shipments were 4.6 percent lower than […]
SMU Steel Buyers Sentiment Index improved to +27 this week, this is 6 points better than the +21 measured during the first week of January and is almost back to the levels achieved during the middle of December (+28). However, current Sentiment is well below the +49 measured during the middle of January 2012 – […]
Our steel market survey continues with invitations out to approximately 689 companies. We will send a reminder to those who have not yet responded at approximately 8 AM ET on Wednesday morning. SMU will continue to collect responses until 3 PM ET on Thursday and will begin reporting our findings in Thursday evening’s issue of […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) has developed an exceptional basic steel training program covering the steel industry (flat and long products). Our two day workshop, which we call – Steel 101: Introduction to Steelmaking & Market Fundamentals – is meant to provide a comprehensive review of the way steel is made by the blast/BOF or electric […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Former RG Steel assets from both Sparrow Point and Warren are headed for the auction block. Sparrow Point assets are being offered by Hilco Industrial at an onsite auction January 23-24 and will include mobile, construction, material handling and support equipment along with spare parts and production lots. An online auction […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Construction employment is expected to rise in 2013 according to survey data presented by the Associated General Contractors of America in their construction industry outlook report for 2013. Of those firms surveyed in 30 states, 31 percent expect to add new staff this year while only 9 percent plan to make […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Conditions for New York manufacturers continue to decline at a modest pace according to the Empire State Manufacturing Survey for January 2013. The general business conditions index declined for the sixth consecutive month to -7.8 in January. New orders fell four points to -7.2 and the shipments index declined 15 points […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Iron ore prices are at a 15 month high but are unlikely to stay that way say analysts. Currently, 62% Fe ore is at $158 per tonne, soaring from November’s price of $116 and almost doubling from the low of $87 per tonne in September. Analysts say the increase is a […]
The American Iron & Steel Institute (AISI) reported their estimated raw steel production data for the week ending January 12, 2013. According to AISI estimates the U.S. steel industry produced 1,819,000 net tons of raw steel last week. This represents an increase of 3.6 percent compared to the week earlier but is 5.2 percent lower […]
For the past seven weeks, Steel Market Update (SMU) Price Momentum Indicator has been stuck in “Neutral” waiting for something to push prices in one direction or another. When we made the adjustment the week of November 27, 2012 from Higher to Neutral our SMU range for hot rolled coil was $620-$660 per ton (average […]
Flat rolled steel prices continued to drift slightly lower as buyers reported a tighter range than what we had seen one week ago. The top end of the range for all of the items declined between $10 and $20 per ton this past week. The net result being our averages adjusted lower by $5 to […]
I want to extend our apologies for the “test” newsletter which was sent out to our members by our website developers on Saturday. We received a few emails surprised at some of the dated headlines. Seems like a few people don’t believe “stability” is in the cards for the current market. I received a number […]
According to Baker Hughes data from January 11th, 2013, the U.S rig count for this week is 1,761 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This number represents a decrease of 1 rig from last week. Compared to last year the 1,761 count is a decrease of 226 rigs. Canadian rigs increased by […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Natural gas is providing cost savings for steel plants while at the same time creating more demand for steel products used in pipelines, drilling equipment and rigs. It is a win-win situation for the steel and the natural gas industries One of the ways natural gas is utilized by the steel […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Essar Steel Algoma was granted temporary pension relief on Friday by the Ontario government. The company will defer special pension payments for the 12 months beginning December 2012 and ending November 2013. Low interest rates have caused Essar Steel Algoma’s pension contribution requirement to more than double from those made […]
Residential Storage Water Heaters U.S. shipments of residential gas storage water heaters for November 2012 increased 23.9 percent, to 412,416 units, up from 332,886 units shipped in November 2011. Residential electric storage water heater shipments increased 6.9 percent in November 2012, to 331,237 units, up from 309,985 units shipped in November 2011. For the year-to-date, […]
Written by: Sandy Williams ThyssenKrupp continues to cull members of its boards for roles in the failed ThyssenKrupp AG venture and for allegations of corruption. The latest member of a board to leave is Bertin Eichler, vice chairman of the ThyssenKrupp AG supervisory board. Eichler has been under investigation for misuse of company funds for […]
This week, the SMU Fair Value HRC (hot rolled coil) Model has spot HRC pricing above Fair Value for the ninth week in a row. This is due to the SMU average spot HRC index decreasing $10 per ton to $625 per ton and scrap inputs remaining the same over last week’s figures. The Fair […]
At the moment we have broken into two camps when it comes to hot rolled coil – the CRU and SteelBenchmarker (which did not report prices this past week) who both pegged their HRC prices in the mid-$630’s – and the rest of the indexes we follow on a regular basis and ourselves (SMU) who […]
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Commerce released final census data for the month of November and preliminary census data for the month of December. Based on that data, SMU forecast 2012 imports will be 17 percent higher than what was imported one year earlier. A large portion of those tons were imported by domestic […]