SMU Price Ranges & Indices: Heading on Up

When Steel Market Update (SMU) reviews pricing we take a number of items into account. We look at the transaction prices that buyers report to us as having been made within the past few days. We look at the offers to sell being made by the mills as well as the offers to buy being made by buyers (ask/bids) to see if the momentum has changed. We also take into consideration information that we glean from domestic mills regarding the transaction prices they report to us. The fact that we actively consider asking prices (or bids when prices are moving lower) keeps us on the cutting edge of where we believe actual prices to be as well as the direction they are heading.

The domestic steel mills began raising spot prices last week. We are seeing the results of those increases being reflected in the upper end of our range. On average we are reporting the upper end as being at least $20 per ton higher than one week ago (exception Galvalume which tended to already reflect higher spread than galvanized). Hot rolled continues to be the weakest product and we will watch it carefully as we go through the next few weeks as we expect the bottom end to move higher from here.