US HRC price fluctuates near $30 per cwt

Fastmarkets’ daily steel hot-rolled coil index, fob mill US was calculated at $29.79 per cwt ($595.80 per short ton) on Wednesday September 23, down by 1% from $30.08 per cwt on Tuesday.

The price, however, has increased by 6.2% from $28.06 per cwt on September 16 and by 26.4% from $23.57 per cwt on August 21.

Prices have fluctuated near the $30-per-cwt mark since domestic mills announced their latest round of flat-rolled price increases.

Inputs were received within a narrow range of $28-30 per cwt.

Heard in the market
Lead times were said as short as four weeks at certain mills.

But some market participants expressed concern about most mills being sold out for November and the limited availability of material.

Market participants also indicated that they believe mill outages and higher raw material costs will continue to keep spot availability tight, but see $30 per cwt as the ceiling for hot band.

Quote of the day
“I think it depends on what happens to scrap in October. If [the price] goes up, I think mills will try to get more money [for HRC],” one distributor source said. “I think the hot-rolled coil market picked up quicker than people thought it would. And then lead times went out and people were used to not being concerned about [lead times], and now they’re are concerned about it.”

Index calculation
Transactional and non-transactional data in the producer and consumer sub-indices were carried over due to a lack of new inputs.

No data was collected via data submitter agreement.

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