Flat Rolled Steel Demand: Seasonal Weakness or New Leg Lower?

Last week Steel Market Update (SMU) conducted our mid-November flat rolled steel market survey. We invited approximately 600 companies to participate representing manufacturing, steel service centers, trading companies, steel mills, toll processors and suppliers to the steel industry. Last week’s participation mix was very similar to what we see on a regular basis with 46 percent of the respondents being from manufacturing, 40 percent from service centers, 6 percent steel trading companies, 5 percent steel mills and 3 percent toll processors.

The way our steel surveys work is we have a group of questions where we want to collect responses from everyone, after which we break out each group to respond to industry specific questions. This provides us with data regarding over-all trends and then we can drill down by market segment in order to get more clarity on the subject.