SMU Steel Buyers Sentiment Index: No Sign of an Upturn Yet

Declining steel prices may have turned around following price increase announcements from the mills, but there’s no sign yet of a similar uptick in steel buyers’ sentiment. Steel Market Update’s Steel Buyers Sentiment Index, which has been generally trending downward for the past year, saw another slight dip in early March.

The goal of the index is to measure how buyers and sellers of steel feel about their company’s ability to be successful today (Current Index), as well as three to six months into the future (Future Index). Results are posted as both single data points and as three-month moving averages (3MMAs) to smooth out the trend. It’s important to note that the readings overall remain solidly in the optimistic half of the scale and the data has moved only within a narrow range, so there have been no big swings in industry sentiment for quite some time. Having said that, we want to note that Current Sentiment is well below the highs achieved at the beginning of 2018. Current Sentiment, as measured using our three-month moving average, was +72 one year ago.