Steel Products Prices North America
June 28, 2016
SMU Price Ranges & Indices: See-Saw Market
Written by John Packard
The flat rolled markets are trying to find where, and what direction, prices should be moving. After being down slightly last week, this week prices are up slightly. There is no clear-cut focus to the market at this moment. As one service center purchasing director put it to us this afternoon, “[Pricing] is all need based…even our customers are on the sidelines waiting for the macro to stabilize….” While a steel mill executive told us, “Pricing is dead flat. August is pretty full. Lets call it 8 weeks on domestic coated.”
Service centers seem to be split on the market. We heard this from a Chicago based distributor, “The market is in it’s typical summer vacation quiet time. Buyers interpret this as price softness & are worried, but we have not seen evidence of price erosion. The mills will very likely hold the line on pricing until the August 5th HR duty ruling and in all likeliness the Government will continue to take a hard position on HR imports and give the market a price boost. The market needs time to digest the current higher price levels. Supply constraints will keep prices at an elevated level through 3Q.”
