Service Center Spot Prices Still Don't Reflect Confidence in Price Increases

Flat rolled steel distributors have been slowly backing away from offering spot prices to their end customers at lower numbers than what was seen a couple of weeks ago. At the same time, these same service centers are reporting difficulties getting those same end user customers to pay higher prices, despite the price increase announcements led by the West Coast mills and then Nucor in the East over the past few weeks. This is part of what we learned from the flat rolled and plate steel market trends analysis done last week (week ending Feb. 8, 2019).

Fewer manufacturing companies reported their service center suppliers as lowering spot prices. During the middle of January, 86 percent of the manufacturing companies responding to our invitation reported distributor spot prices as being lower than what they were seeing at the beginning of January. Now, two weeks later, only 59 percent reported spot prices as still in decline.