Service Centers Essentially Eliminate Apparent Inventory Deficit

The following article was originally published in our Premium edition of Steel Market Update last week after the MSCI shipment and inventory data was released. Service Center Apparent Inventory Deficit/Excess is one of the proprietary products available for our Premium Level customers. We thought our Executive customers might be interested in how our forecast did this past month and what we are forecasting for the coming months.

Steel Market Update nailed (in our opinion) last month’s forecast for August. We projected that the -193,000 tons deficit from the end of July (based on our proprietary formula for what a balanced flat rolled inventory level should be for the U.S. service centers) would be eliminated and move into a very small excess situation. This was due to an import adjustment that we made to inventory levels of 200,000 tons. The actual excess/deficit level for August was -9,000 tons which is pretty darn close to perfect when you are playing with large numbers.