Steel Products Prices North America
April 2, 2017
Comparison Price Indices: Mixed Results
Written by John Packard
SMU saw the flat rolled steel markets as flat to slightly down while SteelBenchmarker was mixed and Platts had hot rolled and cold rolled prices increasing by $10 per ton. Sounds like a confusing market but, when looking closer at the actual numbers it really isn’t.
Benchmark hot rolled coil (HRC) was reported to average $655 per ton ($32.75/cwt) on our index with Platts taking their number up $10 to $660 per ton. A $5 per ton spread between SMU and Platts is nothing more than differences in collection techniques and where data came from during the past week. SteelBenchmarker, which only produces their index twice per month, was up $5 from their last report and is now at $639 per ton. This index tends to lag the market (rather dramatically when markets are moving quickly) and could be related to their data providers and when the data was collected.
