Lead times may be showing signs of reaching a bottom (too early to tell if only a dead cat bounce) but there is no question that the steel mills are willing to negotiate pricing on all flat rolled products. We have been hearing it from the flat rolled steel buyers and executives as we speak […]
Have I mentioned lately that our next Steel 101 workshop will be held in the Chicago area and will include a tour of the NLMK Indiana mini-mill? Details are on our website or you are welcome to contact our offices at: 800-432-3475 or info@SteelMarketUpdate.com. We believe this will be another excellent program as we bring […]
Steel Market Update last Apparent Excess/Deficit forecast for flat rolled steel shipments and inventories called for shipments in January to exceed 2014 levels by 2 percent. Total flat rolled shipments for the month of January 2015 were projected by us to be 2,415,000 tons. In actuality, shipment levels were 1.6 percent higher than January 2014 […]
We received a very mixed bag when it came to hot rolled pricing this week. Our range expanded from the $490-$530 we reported last week to $480-$550 this week. Our HR average actually rose by $5 compared to one week ago. We are not ready to announce prices as having “bottomed,” as one renegade mill […]
Steel Market Update received a question from one of our readers regarding a comment we made in Tuesday evening’s issue during our analysis of flat rolled steel pricing. The comment was about the domestic mills negotiating away extras and how this was impacting transactional pricing. All of the indexes are suppose to take into consideration […]
Traders at the Port of Tampa Steel Conference told me hot rolled offers at in the $460 to $480 per ton range with little to no activity. It is not clear yet if the import offers will move lower from the $460 to $480 level. One trader told me that they were not taking any […]
Flat rolled steel buyers are resigned to a steel price spot market which takes benchmark hot rolled prices below the $500 per ton ($25.00/cwt) level. One of the large hot rolled service centers this morning told Steel Market Update that they were having a difficult time keeping up with the pace of the falling numbers. […]
Flat rolled steel mills saw their lead times shorten according to the buyers and sellers of steel responding to this week’s market analysis. Weakening lead times are one of the keys which is impacting flat rolled and scrap prices – both down big over the past few weeks. Hot rolled lead times average 2.79 weeks, […]
The domestic steel mills and their ferrous scrap suppliers traditionally negotiate pricing on scrap to be delivered during the first few days of the new month. This means the mills and their suppliers are deep into negotiations regarding February scrap purchases right now. Last week the word amongst the “scrappies,” as well as their mill […]
“Where does the elevator stop,” is what one flat rolled steel buyer told Steel Market Update during a phone conversation about pricing held earlier today. “I haven’t hit the panic button yet, but my finger is close…” Flat rolled steel prices continued to tumble as some mill salespeople were telling their customers they have been […]
According to the respondents to this week’s flat rolled steel market survey, the domestic steel mills are willing to negotiate prices on new orders for all flat rolled steel products. As you can see by the graphic below, ever since the beginning of the 4th Quarter 2014 the domestic steel mills have been willing to […]
Domestic flat rolled steel mill lead times continued to shrink based on the responses received in our most recent steel market survey. Steel Market Update conducted our mid-January flat rolled steel market analysis this week. We invited over 600 companies to participate in the survey and, based on the average of the responses received, lead […]
Benchmark hot rolled coil prices dropped again this week as buyers struggled with an oversupplied HRC market due to high service center inventories, a continuation of high foreign imports and the collapse of the OCTG and line pipe markets due to weak oil prices. Couple those three items with more domestic supply than necessary for […]
The following article is a continuation of our Steel Buyers Basics series written by Mario Briccetti. Mario is Principal of Briccetti & Associates, a Supply Chain consulting firm, and can be reached at Mario@mbriccetti.com. Briccetti wrote the following article as part of our Steel Buyers Basics series of articles, many of which can be found […]
Flat rolled steel prices continued to drop this week as the domestic steel mills struggled with holes in their order books due to growing inventories at the service centers, a sharp drop off in pipe and tube orders associated with the energy markets, and the continued flow of imported steel (which is part of the […]
Flat rolled steel prices have been dropping over the past few weeks and the wholesalers who service the mechanical contractors are concerned as the pace of the price decline quickens. Earlier today Steel Market Update participated in the HARDI sponsored galvanized steel conference call. HARDI (Heating, Air-conditioning, Refrigeration Distributors International) wholesalers supply galvanized sheet and […]
Domestic steel mill lead times continue to slide (shrink) on all flat rolled products with the exception of Galvalume. Based on the results of this weeks flat rolled steel market analysis, hot rolled lead times averaged 3.19 weeks, down one half a week compared to the beginning of December and one week shorter than what […]
The previous article about steel mill lead times being one week shorter than what we saw one year ago set the stage for what we are seeing when it comes to mill negotiations. Our survey respondents almost unanimously reported the domestic mills as willing to negotiate pricing on all flat rolled products. We had 97 […]
Our report on the futures markets comes to us from Andre Marshall, CEO of Crunch Risk, LLC and the instructor for our Managing Price Risk I and II workshops. Andre will discuss the hot rolled coil futures (HRC) trading done over the past few days as well as trading of Busheling scrap (BUS) and iron […]
Steel Market Update did not rush to break through the $600 barrier for hot rolled coil. We made a conscious decision that due to the Holidays we wanted to wait until this week to make sure we had as many data points as possible before breaking through $600. We are aware that some of our […]
There is one word that comes to mind when trying to write about the status of steel prices: quiet. All is quiet as the few buyers that remain in their offices are spending precious little time buying new steel. With limited information available we have chosen to keep our price ranges and indices the same […]
Steel buyers were few and far between this week as everyone prepares for Christmas and Hanukkah holiday celebrations. Even so, those who were working this week and responding to our queries reported aggressive steel mills on all flat rolled products. We have seen erosion at the upper end of our range on all products and […]
The good news for the consumer is gasoline prices are closing in on $2.00 per gallon in many areas of the country. The bad news for the steel industry is the drop in oil prices means a slowdown in new drilling, one of the major users of hot rolled coil. The good news for buyers […]
Lead times at the domestic steel mills continue to be shorter than what we saw this time last year (when prices were rising). The average lead time for benchmark hot rolled coil dropped to an average of 3.53 weeks based on the results from this week’s SMU flat rolled steel market survey. As you can […]
We saw prices slipping in hot rolled and cold rolled steels over the past seven days. We are seeing offers on benchmark hot rolled below the $600 per ton level. One service center who is usually a coated only buyer told SMU that they purchased a small amount of hot rolled and they had offers […]
Nucor Corporation expects a “moderate” decrease in earnings in the fourth quarter along with a seasonal drop in operating performance. In the company’s fourth quarter earnings guidance, Nucor noted that exceptionally high import levels have put pressure on steel production and margins. A larger than expected decrease in outside shipments is expected in the fourth […]
All of the flat rolled steel price indices followed by Steel Market Update moved lower this past week. Based on performance and their ability to keep up with the markets, the three key indices are SMU, CRU and Platts which reported benchmark hot rolled price averages as $615, $614 and $615 per ton, respectively. SteelBenchmarker […]
Today’s hot rolled, ferrous scrap and iron ore futures article comes to us from Andre Marshall, CEO of Crunch Risk LLC and the instructor for Steel Market Update’s Managing Price Risk I and Managing Price Risk II workshops. Along with HRC, iron ore and BUS trading. Andre also discusses the S&P 500, copper and crude […]
US Steel is trying to raise flat rolled steel prices as lead times on hot rolled, cold rolled and galvanized slip into the 1st Quarter 2015. The General Manager of North American Flat-Rolled Marketing at US Steel sent an internal memo to the General Managers of Sales for the mill regarding current market conditions and […]
I was advis ed today that Nucor had reduced their pricing on beams by $40 per ton in order to compete with foreign beam offers. The question then became what are the mills doing to blunt the impact of foreign steel offers of flat rolled products into the United States? As we reported on Tuesday, […]