Metal Monday January 3, 2022 with Nick Snyder and Brett Ekart.
Play the youtube video and follow along with the text below.
Nick Snyder:
All right, first Metal Monday of 2022. How you doing today, Brett?
Brett Ekart:
I'm doing great, man. Just get back into the swing of things. That last week between... Always the last week of the year, it's kind of notorious, it feels like, in our industry that that is kind of a dead week as far as-
Nick Snyder:
Almost the last two weeks to a certain...
Brett Ekart:
Yeah.
Nick Snyder:
Especially, for here in Idaho, we had a lot of winter finally came. A lot of snow. We had a couple dead weeks seeing a lot of people or just already in Christmas mode. Then the following week, you get New year's. You just get a couple... So it really makes December a tough month.
Brett Ekart:
Yeah. Winter came with a vengeance here. It was 12 degrees this morning. My wife was like, "Are you going to put the dog in the kennel?" I'm like, "Well, she is a dog." And she's like, "Let's just put her in the laundry room." I'm like, "Okay."
Nick Snyder:
Yep. Yep.
Brett Ekart:
She won. I'm like, "All right, that's fine."
Nick Snyder:
Yep. We do a laundry room for the dogs too when it gets like this. So in the better weather, they get stay outside.
Brett Ekart:
Yep.
Nick Snyder:
So, we're into January. Do we know where ferrous, where steel's going to be?
Brett Ekart:
We don't. It feels like it's going to be soft. That's what everybody's trying to talk it down. Which is what it is. We'll see what the next few months bring. But it feels like the market is softening up. The base metals were a little bit soft this morning. Copper was off, and nickel, it was off a little bit more even than [crosstalk 00:01:44].
Nick Snyder:
Yeah, it was off 11 early.
Brett Ekart:
Yeah. It's kind of crawled its way back. And I think as people get back into the swing of things, we'll have a truer read on what this market's going to do, ferrous and really base metals, non-ferrous wise.
Nick Snyder:
Yeah. Non-ferrous, the last couple weeks, really been kind of a nice little rebound too.
Brett Ekart:
Yeah. It's been hanging in there pretty strong. I don't know, I'm always optimistic, but I'm also a temper, you know, measure it. But I feel like there's still momentum going into '22.
Nick Snyder:
And it still boils down to there's just not a lot of material out there.
Brett Ekart:
A hundred percent.
Nick Snyder:
So you would just think that's going to push the price up. I just read an article through Apple News this morning about the housing market where they don't think you're going to see big swings up this year, but they still think because of volume, it's still going to trickle up.
Brett Ekart:
Well, you see the price of lumber, right?
Nick Snyder:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Brett Ekart:
Lumber hit 1700 and it went all the way to five. And where is it sitting at today? 1150.
Nick Snyder:
Yeah. So I'm just like everything-
Brett Ekart:
The price is still two to three times higher than what your traditional builders are used to buying their lumber packages for.
Nick Snyder:
And every house has a lot of copper in it.
Brett Ekart:
Base metals, I feel are going to be... We may not see the exponential increases. We also have to think at the beginning of January this last year, we came on off some pretty gnarly low points. So, are you going to get that big of an increase? No. But should you hold relatively speaking around the similar prices where you're at today or better? I feel fairly confident in that.
Nick Snyder:
That's what it feels like. All these markets are somewhat connected. You see one take a big dip or one a big increase, it eventually trickles to the other ones. So housing market to the mental markets or commodities in general.
Brett Ekart:
Yeah.
Nick Snyder:
You know, lumber.
Brett Ekart:
It still comes back down to this month is going to be difficult transportation-wise, even to move scrap. Bring it in, move it out. Like I said, it's 12 degrees here this morning. It's going to get a little bit warmer this week, but not a lot. It's still gnarly on the weather side. It's supposed to snow.
Nick Snyder:
It's supposed to snow tomorrow.
Brett Ekart:
Rain.
Nick Snyder:
Snow and rain.
Brett Ekart:
Muck. And, at the end of the day, that's not conducive for processing, buying, shipping a lot of scrap. So I'm cautiously, but still optimistic about February. Because if January makes it tough to move scrap, we don't even have to talk about the logistics and the supply chain issues that are out there. That's on every news cycle, every news channel. And that's not going to get any better. It definitely doesn't get any easier when the weather's like this. So I'm not too worked up about it.
Nick Snyder:
Same here. Well, we'll keep everybody posted when we know more. And I wish we had a crystal ball so we could tell you what it's going to look like in a month, but we don't. So we just kind of hear the news and pass it on.
Brett Ekart:
Absolutely. Hope everybody has a great day.
Nick Snyder:
Thanks.