Metal Monday – June 14, 2021

Nick Snyder:
All right. Welcome, everybody. We here on Metal Monday, a little bit later than our normal morning session. So, I mean, things are pretty sideways today. You know?

Brett Ekart:
Yep.

Nick Snyder:
Things have leveled out. I mean, I think gold took a pretty big hit earlier but ...

Brett Ekart:
Yeah, but we don't really deal much with gold, so ...

Nick Snyder:
We don't do much gold, but I mean, everything else seemed to ... Copper mainly kind of had a rough week but kind of leveled out, found its new home maybe, that 4.50, 4.55 range.

Brett Ekart:
Yeah, I think we're hanging around that range, that 4.50. I think depends on what happens. They got that Fed meeting on Wednesday. That's going to determine whether people feel like it's risk-on/risk-off, inflation-on inflation ... I mean, it's crazy that people, that you think about that type of stuff, the Fed minutes meeting and what are their decisions, their outlook-

Nick Snyder:
And when is that?

Brett Ekart:
It's on Wednesday.

Nick Snyder:
On Wednesday, okay.

Brett Ekart:
So, that'll be a market driver, pusher/puller, one way or the other, but we'll see. We'll see where it goes. I feel like the commodities, I'm already hearing people talk up the iron, even in July, because people are starting to notice the scrap flow. They were anticipating maybe a little bit more scrap flow coming into June-

Nick Snyder:
But the $20 bump didn't do it. I mean, the West Coast $20 bump.

Brett Ekart:
Yeah. I mean, if you go harder, further. The [inaudible 00:01:26] it's not ... The flow isn't like it was, and I've been preaching this, and I've been telling people, if you want to bring out the tons, man, you better bring up the price.

Nick Snyder:
Well, even here, and today's been slow here, but it's hot. It's really hot here.

Brett Ekart:
That's what I'm saying. It's not going to get any cooler. I mean, we got three months of this shit.

Nick Snyder:
And it's hot, but last week we had some pretty decent weather, like where it wasn't too hot. We were just busy every day last week. It was good. Felt like the old days when we were just swamped.

Brett Ekart:
Yeah.

Nick Snyder:
As retail. Isn't retail and commercial mixed?

Brett Ekart:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Nick Snyder:
But we were just swamped. We threw a new guy into the mix on the scale house on Friday, and he killed it. You know?

Brett Ekart:
Yeah.

Nick Snyder:
But it's nice to see, because I love when it's that busy, man. As much as some new guys in the scale house might want to pull their hair out because they're not so used to that flow, but your day goes by so quick. And then you got more material in the yard, and your customers are happier because the prices are doing good. It's just a win-win situation. So, we'll see how the summer goes with that kind of flow, but ...

Brett Ekart:
All in all, though, it's pretty positive on the commodities front. The PGMs are kind of soft on the platinum, palladium, rhodium, but I mean, rhodium's starting to make it comeback.

Nick Snyder:
Rhodium was up 1,000 early.

Brett Ekart:
Yeah, I think it's in the middle at 21,5-ish, somewhere in there. So, platinum 27 and some change, or sorry, palladium $27 and some change, platinum 11,5.

Nick Snyder:
The dollar right now is a little stronger. Right?

Brett Ekart:
Yeah, I mean-

Nick Snyder:
So that's kind of pushing things.

Brett Ekart:
But in general, I mean, nickel's up. I mean, I'm starting to get more calls on stainless. So, price of nickel's coming up. It was 815. The aluminum market is still strong right now. I mean, you're seeing that.

Brett Ekart:
I don't know. All in all, lead looks good. Things are good. Things are good in commodities world. Now here comes the heat. Nothing chokes flow like heat and cold.

Nick Snyder:
Oh, yeah. It's going to be slow this week because we're going to be close to high 90s all week, so ... All right.

Brett Ekart:
All right, man.

Nick Snyder:
Thanks.

Brett Ekart:
Take care. Have a great week.