Metal Monday #8 with Nick and Brett

March 30th, 2020: Nick and Brett sit down to talk about the current markets in light of COVID-19. They discuss the non-ferrous markets (Copper, Aluminum, Nickel, and Lead) and also touch on where the ferrous markets may move as we head into April. Their goal is to bring insight on why pricing can change so quickly in the scrap metal industry.

Transcription

alright guys we’re here with another metal Monday how you doing Brett doing well man mondays are always fun days in this interesting scrap environment that we’re in right now yeah absolutely it seems to me that at least copper kind of settled for now even today it’s not much movement one other thing I keep kind of reading about it’s a secondary aluminum markets really getting kind of hit with the auto shutdown do you have any input on a market I mean is probably the most challenging right now as far as pricing it seems like there’s still decent demand no come but the pricing has definitely came off significantly I mean when you’re 67 cents on the LME it’s pretty pretty tough copper has is bounced around that 215 range so we’ll kind of see how that plays out this this next month I think you know there for a while we were just trying to fight the fires as they came like day by day hour by hour but it seems like now everybody’s kind of settling into this low volume low price environment so what’s gonna really determine the pricing in my opinion

is going to be the flow if the one that the flow slows when it slows I mean we’re already starting to see scrap flow slow down and if there is even decent demand out there hopefully someday we will see a supply demand pricing adjustment upwards well that’s a good sign that you’re still getting requested to buy aluminum and that’s still the demands out there yeah I’m driving around and still chatting with some people on the month mainly on the phone I mean a lot of the art customers are at least still up and running so we’ll still be picking up their bands won’t have that flow scrap but it does seem like some flow has definitely slowed down this last couple the retail flow is slow but I think that’s pretty true no matter where you go our commercial business is staying pretty busy so that’s that helps on the production side the interesting factor will be the fairest market this month maybe we probably won’t have firm Faris pricing until next Monday mm-hmm but the way that that’s looking is it’s looking pretty dismal for April so that’ll be the big challenge

this week is trying to figure out where that markets gonna land and my guess is it probably won’t firm up Faris pricing until the very beginning of next week so hopefully by next metal Monday we can give everyone some insight on nothing so I think so for now it’s just you know manage what you can manage control you can control and keep your people safe the best you can absolutely all right thanks Brett no problem take care