While doing better than Europe, where stainless demand is very weak, the US stainless steel market continues to be sluggish and unable to generate the price rises seen in many carbon steel products lately. Most of its end use markets continue to improve, although in many cases not as quickly as many in the industry - both mills and distributors - would like to see. Clearly continued declines in transaction prices with nickel falling much lower than had been anticipated is one reason that US stainless steel shipment improvements are lower than expectations. MBR believes that if the bottom has not yet been reached, it will be in the next month or so. We, however, do not expect distributors to get off of the sidelines until they are certain that stainless prices will not fell further and even then, we do not expect them to take big positions until consumption firms sufficiently to bring supply and demand in better balance.
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