Over the past decade more steel indices have emerged in the steel commodities markets. All serve the same objective of providing pricing benchmarks for buyers and sellers of steel – and, in recent years, for the financial settlement of derivative contracts. As the number of indices grew so did the questions surrounding the validity of […]
By John Packard Have flat rolled steel prices reached their peak? We captured mixed results in this week’s analysis of the indices followed by Steel Market Update. Platts Midwest hot rolled and cold rolled coils both shot up $12.50 per ton compared to where we had them one week ago. Steel Orbis numbers did not […]
SMU doesn’t normally publish obituaries. I found the one about Berthod Beitz former Chairman of Krupp Steel especially touching and important to acknowledge. For the younger generation the idea of death camps and the world at war must be quite foreign. Even those of us born after World War II have only faded memories of […]
Written by: John Packard Bucket Deals are Killing Regional Wholesalers and Small Distributors Somewhere along the line the idea of allowing flexible tonnage purchases on month to month tonnages originally pegged for spot purchases to go into “bucket deals” has been killing some of the smaller spot distributors and wholesalers. The worst time is now […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) watches a number of steel indexes and their weekly price movements on various flat rolled products. Since the May 22nd price increase announcement by U.S. Steel the indexes have been capturing a steady increase in pricing. The spread on benchmark hot rolled has narrowed with all but SteelBenchmarker being within $5.50/per […]
Written by: John Packard Steel Market Update has been conducting our twice monthly steel surveys for approximately five years now. When we started, we chose people and companies with whom we trusted and had worked with knowing we could depend on the quality of the information gathered. Having worked within the industry for over 30 […]
We had a mixed bag this past week as the CRU indices went higher while SMU and Platts moved lower. Stuck in the middle was Steel Orbis which didn’t do anything and SteelBenchmarker which did not report new numbers last week. The benchmark hot rolled index is in a fairly tight range from $610 (SMU/Steel […]
Written by: Sandy Williams Iron Ore slid this week to its lowest level since mid-December. As of March 15, ore price at Tianjin Port reported by The Steel Index was $134.6 /dry tonne (Fe62%)—a drop of 8 percent in one week. Coking coal fell as well, dropping to $161 a tonne on March 14 from […]
All of the indices followed by Steel Market Update had benchmark hot rolled above $600 per ton with all being above $610 per ton with the exception of the CRU. With the exception of Platts – which has been higher than the other indices for a number of weeks recently – cold rolled could be […]
We had a couple of readers ask how our graph would look if we used the CRU hot rolled price assessments versus our own. As you can see by the updated graph there can be some variations between CRU and SMU HRC price assessments but, essentially we follow the same track. The blue line is […]
With the exception of the CRU, all of the other indexes followed by Steel Market Update showed a change in the price direction on all of the flat rolled products followed by SMU. Steel Orbis and Platts both had items increase by as much as $20 per ton where SMU and CRU were a bit […]
Written by: Bradley Clark, Director of Steel Trading, Kataman Metals Well it certainly is beginning to feel like déjà vu all over again. Last week’s price hike announcements come during the same last week of the month as they did the previous month. They came after the spot price was trending down and after deals […]
Written by: John Packard I have been involved in the flat rolled steel industry since 1977. I cannot recall another time during those 36 years in the business when the domestic steel mills have announced two significant price increases within six weeks of one another – with the target minimum base price being exactly the […]
Steel buyers are scratching their heads while steel mills begin to line up announcing identical $50 per ton price increases on all flat rolled products. AK Steel was the first to follow U.S. Steel when they put out a press release advising their customers of their intention to raise spot prices by a minimum of […]
The whole reason behind the various indices is to provide transparency to domestic mill spot transactions. This, in turn, gives buyers and sellers a basis to work from when negotiating both existing (spot) and future (contract) deals. The issue everyone has – as a buyer your job is to be at the cutting edge – […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) flat rolled price assessments remained the same on hot rolled, cold rolled and Galvalume this past week compared to the week before. Our galvanized price average was $5 per ton lower than one week earlier as the lower end of our range dropped by $10 per ton. Platts did not change […]
The HARDI wholesalers who participate in the distribution of galvanized steel into the HVAC industry held their monthly conference call this morning to discuss the steel market. At the time of the last call held in late January, AK Steel had just announced a $40 per ton price increase and the HARDI members were waiting […]
With the exception of SteelBenchmarker which only produces pricing twice per month, the rest of the indexes followed by Steel Market Update were bunched fairly closely together. Hot rolled coil price assessments were reported at $610 by three – SMU, CRU and Steel Orbis while Platts was at $620 and SteelBenchmarker at $631. Many of […]
The American Institute for International Steel (AIIS) put out there monthly newsletter to their members today (Thursday) and they had an excellent article on the Conflict Minerals Act which has a potential to impact steel mills, trading companies, service centers and manufacturing companies (publically traded). They recommended reading what Metal Miner (www.agmetalminer.com) had on their […]
Written by: John Packard “The key to the steel industry is you have to put steel in the hands of people who want to make money with it.” Quote attributed to Service Center Executive. Earlier this week Steel Market Update (SMU) wrote an article about the break-down of the pricing cycle as service centers were […]
Prices crept up on most of the indexes watched by Steel Market Update on a regular basis – even the straggler, Steel Orbis, raised their indices last week. CRU and Steel Orbis are at the low end of the range for Benchmark hot rolled with SMU and SteelBenchmarker somewhere in the middle and Platts at […]
Written by: Andre Marshall, Crunchrisk LLC Financial Markets: Big news today was that the Euro cratered on the back of Draghi’s comments about the Euro from, in USD terms, $1.357 to $1.34. Unless, of course, you think that ArcelorMittal losing $3.99 billion in the Quarter was bigger news. Ouch! I don’t think any of us are […]
After speaking with Platts on Friday – Mr. Surma of US Steel was correct in his call with analysts, there is one index which has hot rolled coil (Midwest) at $630 this week. A split has developed amongst the indexes as various price points have been gathered over the past week to ten days (depending […]
One week ago, ArcelorMittal circulated their price increase announcement and in their internal memo the company raised the issue of, “The market manipulation and discounting of the CRU has had a dampening effect on industry spot prices.” AM then went on to raise prices by $45 per ton but did so by taking the benchmark […]
Steel Market Update likes to review the transcripts of the earnings conference calls between analysts and the steel mills to see what we can glean from the comments being made by the top executives at the mills. We found a number of items of interest in the U.S. Steel conference call. USS Running at 90% […]
This will most likely be the last time Steel Market Update will use the table below. We will begin rolling out some new products in the coming days which are meant to replace and improve upon what we have been providing our members to date. We will go into more details on the changes soon. […]
With the exception of Steel Orbis (which if you haven’t noticed tends to take few positions on a weekly basis) and SteelBenchmarker who did not produce new numbers this past week, CRU and SMU both dropped HRC price assessments by double digits by the middle of the week. By the end of the week, Platts […]
The issue of excessive discounting against CRU and other index-based issues raised by ArcelorMittal in their price increase announcement are ones which Steel Market Update has been researching and which we began raising in our last steel market survey. During conversations with service centers, steel mills and end users we were catching frustrations with the […]
Written by: Andre Marshall, Crunchrisk Financial Markets The last of the obstacles to an improving economy, the debt ceiling and the spending cuts etc seem to be rolling over. The Republicans have cleverly put in a temporary debt ceiling increase covering us until May which will be after the budget talks in April and the […]
ArcelorMittal raised flat rolled spot prices on Wednesday and in the process took a shot at the rest of the industry (and perhaps themselves?) when they identified, “The market manipulation and discounting of the CRU has had a dampening effect on industry spot prices.” They then used the most recent index benchmark plus $45 to […]