Scrap prices were forecast a week ago to drop $10-$20 per gross ton in November. However, we are beginning to hear that the scrap markets may not be as dire as predicted and the numbers may be much closer to sideways than down once the negotiations are concluded next week. One of our scrap sources […]
Written by: Diana Packard Utilizing a trailing average hot rolled coil (HRC) price, the SMU Price MoMo Index for flat rolled steel in the U.S. remained above zero percent this week for the 10th week after 20 consecutive weeks of negative momentum readings. MoMo is based upon the current hot rolled coil price weighed against […]
Written by: Bradley Clark, Director of Steel Trading, Kataman Metals The HRC futures market has been exceptionally quiet over the past few weeks with almost no volume trading as the recent price hikes, uncertainty of pricing going forward and middling futures pricing has led most traders to sit on the sidelines awaiting the next price […]
Steel Market Update (SMU) watches a number of steel indexes and their weekly price movements on various flat rolled products. Since the May 22nd price increase announcement by U.S. Steel the indexes have been capturing a steady increase in pricing. The spread on benchmark hot rolled has narrowed with all but SteelBenchmarker being within $5.50/per […]
Steel Market Update is a member of an association connected to the construction industry called HARDI. HARDI stands for Heating, Air-conditioning & Refrigeration Distributors International. HARDI and The Institute for Trend Research (ITR), an economic forecasting company, work together to gather economic data to provide a forecast to the HARDI members located in the United […]
One of our scrap sources – a Northeast based shredding company – reported sales to one of the mill scrap brokerage companies with two sales on shredded scrap. One 35,000 ton lot at down $20 per gross ton shipping by rail, a second lot of shred sold down $15 per gross ton to ship by […]
Written by: Damon Sun, Daido International The Far East markets will be rather quiet this week. Finished demand is still rather poor. Mills were able to lift construction steel prices up about $10/mt, but scrap prices moved up $20/mt. Rebar prices in Taiwan and in S. E. Asia have retreated/sideways from last week and […]
At SMU we have never previously examined the civilian participation rate or the extent to which part time employment growth is influencing the bottom line number of job creation. Since we believe that both these aspects must influence consumer confidence, consumer spending and ultimately GDP and steel consumption, we decided to dig deeper this month. […]
Written by: Brett Linton According to Baker Hughes data from August 2nd, 2013, the U.S rig count for this week is 1,782 rigs exploring for or developing oil or natural gas. This number represents an increase of 6 rigs compared to last week, with oil rigs down 13 to 1,388 rigs, gas rigs up 19 […]
Letter to the Editor: I would like to add to Peter Brebach’s comments regarding the recently filed dumping suits against nine countries and up front can agree that the majority of the nine countries will be found guilty of dumping [oil country tubular goods]. Since 1969 the domestic steel industry has filed more dumping complaints with […]
Written by: John Packard Steel Market Update is bringing online a new website with the next few weeks. Our first website took approximately a month to build back in the summer of 2008. Almost as soon as it came online we realized it was underpowered for what we were trying to achieve for our readers […]
Our steel market survey will continue on Monday and Tuesday of this week. The survey, which began on Thursday, deals with the current trends in the flat rolled market. If you receive an email invitation with a link to the survey please take a few moments to complete our questionnaire. Our Steel 101 workshop is […]