Final Thoughts

I thought I would wait for my Final Thoughts area of the newsletter before broaching the rumor mill which has been begun questioning at what point do the domestic steel mills go out into the market and announce price increases. I had a number of conversations over the past few days with both consumers of steel as well as a couple of steel mills on the subject. From past experience we know that there are a couple of mills out there who have a tendency to leap before the market is quite ready to absorb an increase announcement. That is the reason why we have unsuccessful announcements from time to time.

From my perspective, and these are my opinions and not those of any steel mill, we could be about 2 to 4 weeks out before we see price announcements.The MSCI shipment and inventory levels will come out next week. It is my opinion that the inventory overages are aggressively being challenged and it is only a matter of time before holes begin to develop. I believe SMU has forecast for our Premium customers that late April and into May lead times would be about the time we expect service centers to come back into the market in a big way.