SMU Data and Models
August 19, 2014
US Steel Service Centers Apparent Inventory Deficit Drops
Written by John Packard
One of the Steel Market Update proprietary products is our U.S. Service Center Apparent Inventory Excess/Deficit report and forecast. Once per month, SMU analyzes the MSCI flat rolled steel shipments and flat rolled steel inventories and we calculate whether the steel distributors are either over-inventories (excess) or under-inventoried (deficit) based on our proprietary formula. We then go one step further and for our Premium Level subscribers we produce a forecast as to where we believe service center shipments and inventories will be in the coming months. Our new free trial subscribers also get access to this data.
Service center flat rolled shipments rose by 7 percent or, 1 percent more than we had forecast when we last produced our Apparent Excess/Deficit report for our Premium subscribers. Flat rolled shipments in July averaged 108,800 tons per day up from the 101,700 tons per day shipped last July.
