It's beginning to look a lot like a steel market downturn. Fastmarkets examines whether that trend is confined to steel - or whether the broader global economy is in trouble.
Hot-rolled coil prices have begun reflecting trends not seen since the 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath - the Great Recession. Fastmarkets has taken the pulse of markets in the United States, Europe, China and Turkey to get a better sense of where HRC stands in these volatile times.US HRC limbo: How low can it go?One point to keep an eye on: Fastmarkets' price assessment for hot-rolled coil in southern Europe has been below the Chinese export price for the last two months. The southern European price averaged $461.97 per short ton ($23.10 per hundredweight) at the midpoint in May, modestly below the Chinese HRC export price average of $467.01 per ton, according to Fastmarkets' data.The European HRC price is down 27.5% from a recent peak of of $636.68 per ton in late March 2018. And that price has averaged more than $500 per ton only once this year - in February, when the...