Steel Products Prices North America
December 22, 2015
SMU Price Ranges & Indices: Modest Moves Higher
Written by John Packard
Steel Market Update is seeing prices as being modestly higher than they were both two weeks ago as well as last week. On average, cold rolled and coated steels have the most strength with lead times on many of these products having extended into February (and some coated into March) at most of the mills (but not all). Hot rolled continues to struggle and, although higher, we have not yet seen the mills as having collected the full $40 on HRC.
Based on the dialogue we had with steel buyers over the past 24 to 48 hours, we found the number of transactions dropping due to the Holidays and the markets were still settling – especially on hot rolled. We caught numbers as low as $340 on HRC but the majority of the numbers we heard from buyers were at $380 per ton. The $380 seems to be the number the mills are trying to reach, hold and then move up from.
