September 17, 2025: Signs That US HRC Spot Price May be Poised to Edge Higher
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Despite ebbing lower in recent weeks, largely due to reported big volume deals, the spot price of hot-rolled coil in the US market is possibly on the verge of an upswing, according to several buyers and sellers active in the market.
“We were just filling in here and there, buying as needed,” a Midwest service center buyer told WSD Monday, “but that changed last week when we needed quite a bit more.”
The buyer would not say precisely how much more, but interestingly, that remark dovetailed with this comment from a mill sales rep: “We saw an uptick in our spot transaction volumes last week, going from a couple hundred tons of HRC to a couple thousand,” he told WSD.
The mill sales rep noted that those HRC spot transaction base prices late last week ranged above $840 per net ton. Spot CRC prices, meanwhile, were around $1,050/ton, he added.
Another buyer, with a steel distributor in the US heartland, noted that lead times — which have been mired at about 3-5 weeks for some time now — “are slowly starting to push out.” The reason cited by him and others: mill maintenance outage season gets underway in earnest in roughly two weeks.
“A lot of these signs probably reflect why Nucor kept its HRC Consumer Spot Price (CSP) at $875/ton for the fourth consecutive week,” a steel trader said. “Only a few mills are reportedly offering the cheap, volume deals,” he added, “and some are already getting somewhat higher prices.”
There’s also a broader sense that any massive discounting is nearing its end.
“I think this is the last week that people will be able to book any large volume deals with those offering them because mills with order book holes in them will no longer have a chance to positively impact their third-quarter financials in a couple more days,” said a mill source.
WSD Take:
WSD suspects that inventory re-stocking will play a key role in a potential pricing upswing in the coming weeks.
As noted in our previous market outlooks, WSD is relatively pessimistic about the immediate demand outlook for sheet products; however, with import volumes shrinking drastically from 2024 levels, and steel buyers maintaining limited inventory on hand, the potential for a moderate buying surge over the next 4-6 weeks could be likely.
Weak market fundamentals could ultimately limit pricing upside. As recently as a few weeks ago, prices were approaching the $800 per ton mark, with most major indexes bottoming out in the $805-$815 per ton range. Without a strong recovery in demand, WSD is skeptical that prices will exceed $865-$885 per ton at any point before the end of 2025.Source: WSD USA Steel Dynamics Service
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