Final Thoughts

We had a good webinar with Lewis Leibowitz yesterday (Wednesday). Our next SMU Community Chat webinar will be held next Wednesday, June 10, and our featured guest speaker will be James Banker, Jr., Executive Vice President, NLMK USA. Banker will be the first steel mill to participate in one of our webinars. Jim has a great sense of humor, and I am sure this will be both enlightening and entertaining. To register for this free event, please click here or go to www.SteelMarketUpdate.com/Blog/SMU-Community-Chat-Eebinars You will also find recordings of past webinars as well as the presentations used.

I mentioned earlier this week that ferrous scrap prices were mixed and not as strong (high) as expected. A general manager of a service center put the possible impact of a weakening scrap market into perspective for us when he wrote: “Scrap for June is starting out a bit weaker than anticipated with ample tonnage of secondary grades available, but still tighter prime grades. So, there may not be as much cost pressure on the scrap side to help underpin the mills and their quest for higher prices. Things seem to be very stable at the moment with what appears to be a decent balance of supply/demand. I still think the odds are higher that we see prices moving higher in the near term, especially with domestic production flat and future imports expected to be similar.”