Lumber Market To Stay Bullish
Prince George, B.C. – Higher prices for lumber, and increased global trade of logs, pushed the sawlog prices over the past year to a point that, according to Wood Resource International, the global sawlog price index rose to its highest level in two years and the third highest price on record since the inception of the index in 1995.
According to Wood Resources the global shipment of logs was up 17% from 2012. This was the highest shipment of logs since 2007 when global trade reached 86 million cubic meters.
On a regional basis, sawlog prices did go up the most in North America and Europe because of a tighter log supply.
In the western USA , Western Canada, Japan, Latvia and Sweden prices were 8-18% higher than in the fourth quarter of 2012.
According to Wood Resources this trend is likely to continue in 2014.
Comments
So is this a report about sawlogs or lumber? Seems the heading is about lumber, but the market discussed is about the global trade of sawlogs?
Latest housing stats I seen from the US have them trending down big time in sales, the last four months, and a huge increase in listings. It appears all the big housing investment bankers like Blackstone (the largest home owner in the US) are now getting out of the market in light of the end of quantitative easing and rising interest rates… they feel the market is too expensive at todays prices.
So maybe sawlogs is a lagging indicator or maybe its a leading indicator… I don’t really know. To me it says we are manufacturing less here in Canada and that raw log shipments are on the rise, but not really translating into actual rising lumber markets for the domestic milling industry.
Im cautiously optimistic about being bullish on lumber until the USA gets its fiscal house in order and starts providing sustainalbe jobs..Although i dont think it can get drastically worse than the current price so im locking the bears up..(for now..)
Enough of “talking head” stuff..
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