Southern Yellow Pine Plywood surprised everyone as trading started at midweek with carloads of material being sold. Counters were not entertained by the mills as wood was sold at firm current market levels. It seems as though everyone wanted to stock up before the long holiday weekend approaches. Some mills thought that the activity was due to the holiday weekend coming up with buyers wanting to get things covered and then coast into September. Look for print to be flat on Friday.
Inventories seem to be low as some treaters are delaying shipments due to temporary outages.
As long as SYP dimension prices fall, so will treated. Keep inventory at minimum levels until we see strength to the SYP market. By late Thursday highly specified loadings were difficult to cover. Mills were reluctant to build order files at what was perceived to the market bottom. A few raised prices but acknowledged they didn't expect much success knowing competitors had wood on the ground.