Final Thoughts

Settling on the direction of SMU’s Price Momentum Indicators has been an easy task for the past year. Prices on all products were clearly moving upward week after week as demand continued to outstrip supplies. Today, the market is changing, and the trend is less clear. Determining price momentum is considerably trickier.

SMU does not forecast steel prices; we leave that to the experts at our parent company CRU. But we do feel an obligation to offer our view on the general price direction based on the various market factors that we track, our survey data and observations from the many buyers we speak with on a daily basis. There’s no hard and fast methodology, no specific formula or algorithm, just our very well informed opinion. It should be just one data point among many you consider when making your purchasing and inventory decisions.