Steel Products Prices North America
November 25, 2014
SMU Price Ranges & Indices: A Quiet Holiday Week
Written by John Packard
It has been a very quiet week due to the Thanksgiving Holiday here in the U.S. on Thursday. A number of service centers advised SMU that the number of inquiries had dramatically fallen off and there isn’t much need to buy steel at this time. The question isn’t so much where are prices this week but, rather, where will prices be headed once we move into the New Year.
The top buyer at a large manufacturing company shared his thoughts with us earlier today, “I believe that prices will continue on a slow slide until the beginning of February. Same issues as last year (over supply, under demand) at this time but for a different reason (last year people bought heavy on CRU bucket deals and this year they seem to be buying foreign). The mills are making a nice return ($100/ton+) and I see them continuing this pattern as long as the spread holds. (Essar is already talking about another furnace).”
