Sheet steel buyers in the US remain hesitant to build inventory, as market sources said Wednesday that buyers see prices at a peak or even starting to slide.
"People are only buying what they have [purchase orders] for," a trader said regarding domestic sheet. "Nobody at these price levels is putting stock on the floor."
The only thing that would inspire buyers to start stocking again would be if oil prices spiked, he said. The trader has had to sell cold-rolled coil below $860/st. Buyers have not had an appetite for CRC, and there's also a lot of Russian CRC arriving, he said.
Hot-dip galvanized sheet demand is better, he said, and the trader has been able to sell at $860/st ex-works.
A service center source said that the $660/st hot-rolled coil price has "faded away," and now he sees $650/st as the new spot price for HRC for spot for "any reasonable inquiries."
The service center source also said he was seeing $850/st spot pricing for HDG sheet, which was about $10/st lower than where he saw prices two weeks ago.
On Wednesday, the Platts daily HRC and CRC price assessments were unchanged at $650-$660/st and $850-$870/st, respectively. Both assessments are normalized to an ex-works Midwest (Indiana) basis.
