US hot-rolled coil prices continue to hover around $26.50 per hundredweight, and prices could shoot sharply higher again over the next week on an increasingly tight spot market, market participants said.
Fastmarkets' daily steel hot-rolled coil index, fob mill US was calculated at $26.40 per hundredweight ($528 per ton) on Friday September 4, little changed from $26.44 per cwt on Thursday and up 5.5% from $25.03 per cwt a week earlier.Inputs were received in a broad range of $23.50-31 per cwt, a spread of $7.50 per cwt. The index's outlier filter automatically discarded an input at the higher end of that range. Deals were reported in a narrower range of approximately $25-$28 per cwt, a spread of $3 per cwt.Heard in the marketMill lead times are between four and eight weeks, according...