The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) analysis of non-farm employment reported on Friday that 173,000 jobs were added in August which was slightly below Moody’s Analytics expectation. The number will likely be revised upward in subsequent months. June and July payrolls were revised higher by a combined 44,000. The unemployment rate, calculated from a different […]
Earlier this week, Steel Market Update hosted our 5th Steel Summit Conference. We had a record crowd in attendance tipping the scales at close to 300 people. We had 26 speakers over the course of the two day conference (including Peter Wright and John Packard of SMU) and, from our perspective, the longer term forecast […]
Buyers and sellers of flat rolled steel continue to remain optimistic about their company’s ability to be successful in the current market conditions. However, we have seen a weakening of that position especially when we look at the numbers based on a 3-month moving average. The SMU Steel Buyers Sentiment Index measures how flat rolled […]
The article below is normally reserved for our Premium members, we felt it would be good to share with our Executive members also. We have two data sources for this report. These are the Federal Reserve and the Oanda forex trading platform. An explanation of these sources is given at the end of this report. […]
According to Baker Hughes data from August 28, 2015, the U.S rig count for the week was 877 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This is a decrease of 8 rigs when compared to last week, with oil rigs up 1 to 675 rigs, gas rigs down 9 to 202 rigs, and […]
The following article is written by Spencer Johnson of FC Stone LLC. With six years of experience, Spencer provides his customers strategic and tactical advice on protecting themselves against commodity price volatility in the steel markets. Spencer will rotate weekly futures articles with Andre Marshall of Crunch Risk, LLC. Spencer can be reached at spencer.johnson@intlfcstone.com. […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) produces for our Premium level members a number of articles/analysis related to the Metal Service Center Institute (MSCI) data which is released on a monthly basis. One of the articles is our Service Center Inventories Apparent Excess/Deficit analysis. Our Apparent Excess/Deficit is the number of tons either over or under what […]
According to Baker Hughes data from August 21, 2015, the U.S rig count for the week was 885 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This is an increase of 1 rig when compared to last week, with oil rigs up 2 to 674 rigs, gas rigs unchanged at 211 rigs, and miscellaneous […]
Global steel production in 12 months through July totaled 1.619 billion tonnes with a capacity of 2.3 billion tonnes. Capacity utilization in July was 68.4 percent with a three month moving average (3MMA) of 70.4 percent, down from 71.6 percent in three months through June. China accounted for 49.4 percent of global production in July. […]
Both these data points are reported in the Federal Reserve G17 data base. This month we have revised our data back through 1994 to account for massive revisions to the G17 data. Incidentally this is why many analysts question government data out of China who never revise their historical information. The US sometimes revises data […]
Steel Market Update publisher, John Packard, participated in the monthly galvanized steel conference call held by HARDI for their wholesalers and other HARDI member companies. The wholesalers supply galvanized steel sheet and coil to the mechanical contractors who are involved in the residential and commercial HVAC markets. The group discussed a number of key market […]
With three direct flat rolled trade cases plus various suits affecting pipe and tube and oil country tubular goods, keeping track of all of the important dates can be mind-numbing. Especially when critical circumstances are alleged or extensions are requested (and we have seen both already in the CORE suit). We asked trade attorney Lewis […]
Figure 1 shows historical gas and oil prices since January 2000. The daily spot price of West Texas Intermediate closed at $44.94 on August 10th after recovering to $59.53 on June 15th. In the last two weeks WTI has declined by $2.23 according to the latest daily figure available from the Energy Information Administration, […]
Below is the latest release issued by the the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) regarding residential and commercial heating and cooling equipment shipments through June 2015. You may read the press release on their website here. Residential Storage Water Heaters U.S. shipments of residential gas storage water heaters for June 2015 increased 17.9 percent, […]
I was speaking with the owner of a manufacturing company late last week. He told me his company had a number of union plants and he has negotiated a number of union contracts over the past few years. “People don’t strike anymore,” he said, “unless someone puts a line in the sand and forces the […]
I was speaking with the owner of a manufacturing company late last week. He told me his company had a number of union plants and he has negotiated a number of union contracts over the past few years. “People don’t strike anymore,” he said, “unless someone puts a line in the sand and forces the […]
We have two data sources for this report. These are the Federal Reserve and the Oanda forex trading platform. An explanation of these sources is given at the end of this report. Oanda is current every day but the Federal Reserve daily broad index (BI) is normally about eight days in arrears. As of August […]
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) analysis of non-farm employment reported on Friday that 215,000 jobs were added in July which was slightly less than consensus expectations. May and June were revised up by a total of 14,000. Monthly job gains have averaged 246,500 over the past seven months. In the 12 months through July, […]
Pipe and tube manufacturers have been struggling to stay afloat as oil prices continue to depress demand from the energy industry. Northwest Pipe Company, headquartered in Vancouver, is among those companies posting a loss for second quarter. The Tubular Products segment of Northwest Pipe saw sales from operations decrease 61.3 percent year over year to […]
Over the weekend we received further updates on the status of the ferrous scrap markets in the United States. We learned that US Steel Granite City had no scrap buys in July and we are hearing that they are passing on offers that are $30 to $45 per gross ton lower than their last buys […]
ATI Flat Rolled Products presented its “Last, Best and Final” contract proposal to the USW negotiating committee on Friday. The more than 2,000 union represented employees at ATI have been working under terms of a contract that expired June 30, 2015. ATI management told employees that changes must be made to adapt to a changing […]
According to Baker Hughes data from August 7, 2015, the U.S rig count for the week was 884 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This is an increase of 10 rigs when compared to last week, with oil rigs up 6 to 670 rigs, gas rigs up 4 to 213 rigs, and […]
The following report was produced by the American Institute for International Steel (AIIS) regarding U.S. steel exports out of the United States to other countries. At the end of the AIIS press release is a table produced by Steel Market Update with an analysis of both total and flat rolled steel exports. Falls Church, VA. […]
The Institute of Supply Management released their July report on August 3rd. An explanation of the ISM index is given at the end of this piece. After seven straight months of decline the index gained 1.3 points in May a further 0.7 points in June then declined by 0.8 points in July to 52.7 with […]
According to Baker Hughes data from July 31, 2015, the U.S rig count for the week was 874 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This is a decrease of 2 rigs when compared to last week, with oil rigs up 5 to 664 rigs, gas rigs down 7 to 209 rigs, and […]
US Steel is expecting higher steel prices and shipments in the second half of 2015 helped by the recent trade case on cold rolled steel and an upcoming trade case on hot rolled steel. The company reported a net loss of $261 million for second quarter which included a write down of $136 million on […]
“My offers haven’t changed much in the past 60-90 days,” is what one Texas based distributor told SMU when asked about spot pricing this week. “Still lackluster demand, no change in mill lead times and oil is still below 50. Not much reason for a change unless core demand improves….” At the opposite spectrum we […]
New orders for durable goods in June increased by 3.4 percent month on month to $235.337 billion. This exceeded analysts’ expectations but the strongest component was an increase in civil aircraft orders. Orders for motor vehicles and parts retained their strength. The three month moving average (3MMA) declined by 0.2 percent. The 3MMA has been […]
Texas manufacturing has been in a slump for several months but is beginning to show signs of improvement. Manufacturing activity in Texas declined slightly in July according to The Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Most of the indexes in the survey were in negative numbers but slowly creeping […]
According to Baker Hughes data from July 24, 2015, the U.S rig count for the week was 876 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This is up 19 rigs when compared to last week, with oil rigs up 21 to 659 rigs, gas rigs down 2 to 216 rigs, and miscellaneous rigs […]