US Midwest HRC index rises near $890/ton

US Midwest HRC index rises near $890/ton
Published by:Chris Kavanagh<>
19 May 2025 @ 20:50 UTC

Hot-rolled coil prices in the US Midwest bounced back on Monday May 19 despite continued cautious purchasing attitudes as buyers try to wait for lower prices. Fastmarkets’ daily steel hot-rolled coil index, fob mill US Midwest, was calculated at $44.48 per hundredweight ($889.60 per short ton) on May 19, up by 2.25% from $43.50 per cwt on Friday May 16, but down by 1.88% from $45.33 per cwt on May 12.
Inputs were collected both in the buyer and seller sub-indices in a range of $38-46 per cwt, representing deals, deals heard, offers and general assessments of market activity.
An input on the low end was discarded by the outlier filter.
Heard in the market Nucor lowered its weekly consumer spot price announcement on Monday to a $44.00 per cwt ($880.00 per ton) base price for the steelmaker’s hot-roll products for the remainder of this week, down by 2.22% from $45.00 per cwt ($900.00 per ton) a week earlier.
Mill offers have continued to tumble in recent weeks, with buyers taking a cautious approach and largely remaining out of the spot market in response to economic turmoil, sources said.
However, some sources have suggested that low levels of spot buying recently have led to dwindling inventories, which may spark purchasing over the near term.
Lead times are at three to five weeks, sources said.
Quote of the day Looking ahead I see the low inventories driving people to buy more in the coming week or two, we just need to see at what price they will be willing to pull the trigger, a steel mill source said.