Steel Products
January 26, 2023
HR Futures: Waiting for Clearer Signals of a Pickup in Demand
Written by Jack Marshall
Healthy hot-rolled (HR) futures activity year to date has been spurred by a pickup in physical sales as the market breaks into the first quarter of 2023.
Open interest climbed from roughly 440,000 ST a side to about 520,000 ST a side before the January contract rolled off, and daily trading volume averaged north of 28,000 ST. Since year-end, some mills have announced an additional HR price increase to $800/ST, which has led the HR spot indexes to run up $84/ST (12/28/22 $664/ST to 1/25/2023 $748/ST).
