Steel Buyers & Sellers Betting on Sideways Market to Continue

Steel Market Update (SMU) conducted our mid-March steel survey this past week. We invited 682 people representing approximately 650 different companies to participate in our survey. Of those responding 49 percent were manufacturing companies, 39 percent were service centers/wholesalers and the balance were trading companies (5 percent), steel mills (4 percent), toll processors (4 percent) and suppliers to the steel industry (2 percent).

During the survey process we wanted to know what direction our full group believed prices to be heading over the next 30 days. As you can see by the graphic below, those believing prices will move sideways has remained relatively stable with 65 percent of our respondents believing prices will neither move higher nor lower over the next 30 days. A slightly smaller percentage believes prices will move higher (15 percent last week vs. 24 percent at the beginning of both January and February of this year). Those believing prices will move lower grew by 7 percentage points to 20 percent.