Final Thoughts

I am making the following comments in my Final Thoughts section for a reason. My Final Thoughts is the area where I will sometimes provide my opinion or make comments regarding conversations that I am having about the market that I haven’t been able to totally put my finger on yet. I know that may sound a little confused, and that is what I am hearing from a number of buyers in the flat rolled market (confusion). Let me try to make the muddy waters a little less murky, but I doubt if the waters will be clear anytime soon.

I spoke with a couple of service centers this afternoon who were reporting their company was losing an excessive number of orders. This led both executives to surmise that the $40.00/cwt base number they have on coated was no longer a competitive number. The president of one of the distributors told SMU they had run the numbers and the base price had to be around $37.50/cwt. I can’t tell you if that is an accurate number or not at this point. However, I did pick up a couple of “outliers” on galvanized and Galvalume in this week’s questionnaire that concern me…