AK Steel Raises the Bar Again. AK Steel (AKS) has announced price increases for its carbon steel products. The West Chester Ohio-based steel-maker said it will raise prices for its hot-rolled products by $20 per ton. Base prices for cold-rolled and coated products will go up by $30 a ton.The increases will go into effect by January 1 2010. It’s the second time in three months the company has raised prices. From the Bull Pen: As previously mentioned AK Steel wouldn’t be doing this if the demand wasn’t there. But continue to look to the steel ETF (SLX). In ...

To sit out and pooh-pooh the rally is to miss a major opportunity for gains, as well as a missed opportunity to make up what was lost in battered portfolios. Investors hiding in the safety of money market funds aren't making anything from those paltry yields.

FOMC Day Not much should happen today until the release of the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) statement at 2:15 PM EST. According to Bloomberg the Federal Reserve is likely to signal that the US economy has begun to recover but still promise to keep the Fed funds overnight interest rate near a record low for an “extended period.”The central bank has kept the benchmark lending rate at a range from zero to 0.25% since December and adopted an asset-purchase program as its main policy tools. But even as economist project 2.9% growth in the quarter -- which is up from ...

The U.S. markets are extended from a near-term perspective, following stocks' latest two-week bull run, indicating a consolidation phase is due at some point. More importantly, longer-term uptrends have been established, and the S&P 500 faces limited resistance.

The U.S. steel industry, hard-pressed by a recession that wreaked havoc in its markets and forced layoffs, can now point to signs that itâ??s through the worst of the downturn.