Metal Monday June 1, 2021 with Nick Snyder and Brett Ekart.
Play the youtube video and follow along with the text below.
Nick Snyder:
All right. How are you doing, Brett?
Brett Ekart:
All good man. Yourself?
Nick Snyder:
Doing well. We are here for Mental Monday on a Tuesday and...
Brett Ekart:
Yes, sir.
Nick Snyder:
We are into June. We're almost halfway done with the year already. It's pretty crazy actually.
Brett Ekart:
We got one more month to be halfway. We were just talking about that earlier.
Nick Snyder:
Yeah. Almost.
Brett Ekart:
We're getting there. We're winding the halfway point down.
Nick Snyder:
And you know...
Brett Ekart:
Let's hope the second half is as good as the first.
Nick Snyder:
Exactly. We still thinking June's going to have some up ferrous for everybody.
Brett Ekart:
I think so, the earliest estimates were pretty high. I'm thinking that we'll see where it ends up, but I think there's still a good bump in June to be had. We're just kind of trying to see where it plays itself out. I haven't heard any numbers, obviously. It's the first day of the month and it's a short week. So I would assume people will kind of want to get things going, but if not, then I guess we'll just play the game and wait and see what happens.
Nick Snyder:
hopefully we get some firm numbers by next Monday. That way we can share that with everybody. And then we saw copper come off. I mean, we were again 3.80 or 4.80 numbers and saw that come up, but really kind of leveled out and, you know, hanging around the 4.60 this morning, it was like all the way around 4.70.
Brett Ekart:
Yeah. I hadn't bumped up to 4.70 and then it kind of tails off toward the end of the day, but it's still, 4.65 copper, dude is nothing to sneeze about. I still think there's a little bit more run in it. I think all the base metals kind of hunt around the precious metals were up a little bit today, so that's always good, but it seemed like everything kind of tailed off toward the end of the day.
Nick Snyder:
Gotcha. And like you hinted on like the PGMs, they've really kind of leveled out too. You saw rhodium really take some big hits.
Brett Ekart:
Last week.
Nick Snyder:
Last week took some big hits. You saw it down like I think I saw down 3000 in one day.
Brett Ekart:
And down to like 16, but I do think that it's... What I saw I was like 22.5 today, so I think that the only reason that was that way was it was came out that whole deal when China was kind of trying to take some liquidity out of the market and kind of de-juice it a little bit. That was when you saw the big hits come out because when you rhodium has been on a hellacious run this year. It doesn't surprise me to see it back off a little bit, but you're starting to see it climb again. So I still feel pretty confident that that material especially is going to hang around the higher side the 20 thousands once it gets back there.
Nick Snyder:
Gotcha. What's your projections. I know it's hard to go into this. Like I've talked a lot of people thinking it's going to come winter, comes fall, and they're going to, you'll see Ferrous take a big drop. You project that we hang tight all year. I know it's so hard to judge, what's your gut say for the next six months.
Brett Ekart:
My gut says it's going to be a good year. I think the only you got to judge it by what the steel mill capacity is and what they're running at. I think that scrap flow is... I think it will be decent in June. I know when we hit started hitting the end of June, July, August, over here, it's hot man. And that flow, I don't care what the price is. The price has got to be real high for it to get real crazy. But I think it's going to be a strong, I think we'll have strong 2022 or 2021, for sure. I don't see going into 22. I think we'll be strong as well, unless something crazy happens.
Brett Ekart:
But the export markets have held pretty strong, which is what we need for good domestic scrap pricing, new steel prices. They're not lowering those. I think every everybody that makes rebar, jumped rebar $40 last week. You've seen like the hot-rolled, cold-roll coil prices go bananas. On our pipe business, they're having trouble getting the steel to make the coil, to make the pipe. It's shortages and the steel mills are still running at a pretty good clip. The only caveat being that they're getting the scrap they need for now at a pretty reasonable price, but just like anything at some point the supply dries up.
Nick Snyder:
And that's what I feel from everyone I talked to even like all the electricians we talked to, they can't get copper. But like, just that right there that's where you feel like we really will get the... I feel like we'll get to a $5 copper. This summer even...
Brett Ekart:
[crosstalk 00:05:07] I still believe he gets $5 copper, I haven't wavered on that.
Nick Snyder:
$5 Copper, I think everything else will kind of follow suit too. And I think we'll have a good year all the way into 2022, until we started to see some market corrections and that will happen. And obviously it's so hard to look a year in advance, but it's something we can talk about.
Brett Ekart:
You need corrections. That's a more of a healthy market. If you get a correction here and there. I think that's not a bad thing.
Nick Snyder:
Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, we'll see everybody else in a week.
Brett Ekart:
All right, man. Talk to you later.
Nick Snyder:
Thanks