Signs of steel price retreat appear

When the books are written on a historic year for steel prices, we will probably look back at August and September as the months when things started falling apart.

Recall that over the summer prices continued to soar upward, and consensus seemed to be not whether hot-rolled coil (HRC) prices would breach $2,000/ton ($100/cwt), but when. The new consensus, according to Steel Market Update (SMU) survey respondents, is that prices already have peaked or will peak before the year is out.

And SMU’s HRC prices reflect that trend too. SMU’s average HRC price was at $1,920/ton as of Oct. 11, down $35/ton a month earlier. September also saw prices decline for three consecutive weeks—the first time that had happened since the market buckled under the weight of the pandemic in the summer of 2020.