Final Thoughts

With the filing of the hot rolled trade case (which was expected by almost everyone in the industry and the date had been leaked long ago) we now have all flat rolled products followed by Steel Market Update involved. It will take time to sort through all of the data and for the process to work its way through the US Department of Commerce and the US International Trade Commission. We are working on a number of articles on the subject including the possible negative impact the HRC case could have on a couple of domestic steel mills, reaction from the steel community, reaction from the trading community and what will happen with prices (and supply) over the next few weeks, months and into next year. We will address these issues over the next few days – at least to the best of our ability.

I am somewhat surprised that there are a number of service centers in particular who have a negative view of the market and prices. A very large hot rolled service center told SMU today, “Unless more domestic capacity comes off short term there is no concern on pricing. Inventories are still high.” This same service center told us that a “bull case” market would only see HRC prices rise by $25 per ton from today’s levels. The bear case scenario has prices flat out until 2nd Quarter 2016.