贮木场和住宅建筑商都推迟了从锯木厂采购木材的时间,期盼着目前直冲云霄的木材价格最终能回落到地面。但它还没有挪动的迹象。而且,随着春夏季项目开工在即,购买木材的热潮已经开始。
“显然,锯木厂赢得了这场对峙。”迪肯木材公司(Deacon Lumber)首席执行官斯廷森•迪恩对《财富》表示。
大量买家的涌入只会进一步推高价格。上周五,根据木材产业调研机构Random Lengths的数据,每千板尺的木材价格跃升至1048美元,较一年前飙涨193%,创下历史新高。
这次价格跳涨不太可能是最后一次。本周一,每千板尺木材(2X4规格)的5月期货合约价格上涨32美元,至1158美元。要不是熔断机制在交易开始20分钟后暂停交易——单个交易日的价格上涨32美元,就会触发熔断机制——此次涨幅还会更高。
迪恩告诉《财富》:“这显然是一次轧空。在期货和现货市场,贮木场做了过多的销售承诺,但没有足够多的木材来填补。”他说,这个信号明确无误地显示,短期内价格还将进一步上涨。
从一开始,新冠疫情就成为一场推动木材价格暴涨的完美风暴。在危机爆发初期的几个月,锯木厂限制了产量。与此同时,这场疫情激发了困在家里的美国人“自己动手”的热潮。这种供需错配又因为创纪录的低利率,以及处于历史低位的现有住房库存(这导致买家竞相建造新房屋)而进一步加剧。尽管木材产量在2月份达到了13年来的最高水平,但由于积压而未交付的订单如此之多,价格并没有下降。
![](https://images1.caifuzhongwen.com/images/attachement/jpg/site1/20210418/0800271cc47121e6069203.jpg)
不要指望需求会很快下降。
“2021年,木材和其他木制品的市场需求仍然深不可测。建筑商还有许多已开工项目有待完成。这将推动木材和板材需求继续高位运行,同时也会让锯木厂很难快速提高产量来重新平衡市场。”Fastmarkets RISI公司专门研究木材价格的高级经济学家达斯汀·贾伯特表示。
贾伯特预测,木材价格最终会回调,但不能保证它会回落到2020年4月每千板尺358美元的价格。如果价格真的回调,那很可能是木材成本让建筑商不堪重负,同时利率上升抑制了购房热情的结果。但这一幕还没有出现,尽管全美住宅建筑商协会(National Association of home Builders)的数据显示,目前的木材价格使得一套新建独栋住宅的价格至少上涨了2.4万美元。(财富中文网)
译者:任文科
贮木场和住宅建筑商都推迟了从锯木厂采购木材的时间,期盼着目前直冲云霄的木材价格最终能回落到地面。但它还没有挪动的迹象。而且,随着春夏季项目开工在即,购买木材的热潮已经开始。
“显然,锯木厂赢得了这场对峙。”迪肯木材公司(Deacon Lumber)首席执行官斯廷森•迪恩对《财富》表示。
大量买家的涌入只会进一步推高价格。上周五,根据木材产业调研机构Random Lengths的数据,每千板尺的木材价格跃升至1048美元,较一年前飙涨193%,创下历史新高。
这次价格跳涨不太可能是最后一次。本周一,每千板尺木材(2X4规格)的5月期货合约价格上涨32美元,至1158美元。要不是熔断机制在交易开始20分钟后暂停交易——单个交易日的价格上涨32美元,就会触发熔断机制——此次涨幅还会更高。
迪恩告诉《财富》:“这显然是一次轧空。在期货和现货市场,贮木场做了过多的销售承诺,但没有足够多的木材来填补。”他说,这个信号明确无误地显示,短期内价格还将进一步上涨。
从一开始,新冠疫情就成为一场推动木材价格暴涨的完美风暴。在危机爆发初期的几个月,锯木厂限制了产量。与此同时,这场疫情激发了困在家里的美国人“自己动手”的热潮。这种供需错配又因为创纪录的低利率,以及处于历史低位的现有住房库存(这导致买家竞相建造新房屋)而进一步加剧。尽管木材产量在2月份达到了13年来的最高水平,但由于积压而未交付的订单如此之多,价格并没有下降。
不要指望需求会很快下降。
“2021年,木材和其他木制品的市场需求仍然深不可测。建筑商还有许多已开工项目有待完成。这将推动木材和板材需求继续高位运行,同时也会让锯木厂很难快速提高产量来重新平衡市场。”Fastmarkets RISI公司专门研究木材价格的高级经济学家达斯汀·贾伯特表示。
贾伯特预测,木材价格最终会回调,但不能保证它会回落到2020年4月每千板尺358美元的价格。如果价格真的回调,那很可能是木材成本让建筑商不堪重负,同时利率上升抑制了购房热情的结果。但这一幕还没有出现,尽管全美住宅建筑商协会(National Association of home Builders)的数据显示,目前的木材价格使得一套新建独栋住宅的价格至少上涨了2.4万美元。(财富中文网)
译者:任文科
Lumberyards and homebuilders alike have delayed buying lumber from sawmills in hopes the price of the sky-high commodity would finally come back down to earth. It hasn’t budged, and now the buying rush is on ahead of spring and summer projects.
“Clearly mills won the standoff,” Stinson Dean, CEO of Deacon Lumber, told Fortune.
This influx of buyers is only further driving up the price. On Friday, the price of lumber per thousand board feet jumped to $1,048, according to Random Lengths. That’s an all-time high, and up 193% from a year ago.
That price jump is unlikely to be the last. On Monday, the May futures contract price per thousand board feet of two-by-fours jumped $32 to $1,158. That uptick would have been higher had circuit breakers not been halted 20 minutes into trading—something that occurs when the commodity is up more than $32 during a single trading day.
“It’s clearly a short squeeze. In futures and spot markets. Lumberyards are overcommitted on their sales, and there isn’t enough wood to cover,” Dean told Fortune. This is a clear signal, he says, that prices will go up more in the short term.
From the onset, the pandemic was a perfect storm for surging lumber prices. At the same time that sawmills were limiting production during the early months of the crisis, the pandemic was spurring a do-it-yourself boom among Americans stuck at home. That supply and demand mismatch was made worse by record low interest rates and a historically tight existing housing inventory which caused buyers to rush to new construction. The backlog is so big that prices aren’t falling despite wood production hitting a 13-year high in February.
Don’t expect demand to drop anytime soon.
“The pipeline for lumber and other wood products demand remains quite deep in 2021…Builders have plenty of ongoing projects to keep working through, which is keeping lumber and panel demand high, and making it very difficult for mills to ramp production up fast enough to rebalance the market,” says Dustin Jalbert, senior economist at Fastmarkets RISI, where he specializes in wood prices.
Jalbert foresees an eventual lumber correction, but there’s no guarantee it will return to the April 2020 price of $358 per thousand board feet. If a correction does occur, it will likely be the result of the cost of lumber overwhelming builders at the same time as rising interest rates tamp down homebuying. That hasn’t happened yet, despite current lumber prices adding at least $24,000 to the price tag of a typical new single-family home, according to the National Association of Home Builders.