Service Center Apparent Deficit Drops to -351,000 Tons

At the end of May 2014 Steel Market Update calculated that the U.S. service center flat rolled steel inventories were short (apparent deficit) by -632,000 tons. At that point in time we projected that the inventory deficit would be reduced by 45,000 tons and that by the end of June the apparent deficit would be -587,000 tons.

When the MSCI released their steel shipment and inventory data earlier this week we used our proprietary formula (basically we calculate where inventories should be in order to be “balanced”) and calculated that the distributors deficit had dropped more than we predicted and at the end of June stood at -351,000 tons.