As a professional platform company that provides the steel market information, CSMC is committed to creating a platform for customers that can provide independent, up-to-date, and accurate price information and ensure a safe and reliable transaction process.

As a predominant company operating a steel market quotation platform, CSMC attaches great importance to the collection of price information. Our company has a special price information department to match professionals for price collection. What we collect is the price information of 93 kinds of steel products. And these products have a total of 868 specifications. The production of these products distributes in 26 steel-producing cities in China, and there are more than 30 trading markets with large trading volumes in these cities. CSMC ensures that all sources of price data are independent and objective. We will conduct cross-validation of data from different sources, conduct manual review for obvious errors, and strive for objective and accurate data. CSMC's price data sources mainly include three aspects which are market transaction data of the day, public quotations on the official website of steel mills, and direct quotations from first-tier distributors.

1. Collect market transaction price information

The price data collectors distributed in major sampling cities and trading markets are the main participants in the collection of price information by our company. Price data collectors from all over the country will organize the price information of a certain steel product in their local steel market into a data table or PDF files, and then they will send them to CSMC by email. Our editorial colleagues will reorganize the received information and upload it to www.chinasteelmarket.com.

The advantage of this method is that the price information of the medium and small-scale steel trading market will be very accurate and timely, and the price information can cover the types and specifications of steel in most cities in China. It is the primary collection method for CSMC price data.

The following shows what our data collectors collected.

Figure 1 The emails of the data collectors

Figure 2 The attachments in the emails of the data collectors

TMI:

At present, there are 85 price data collectors in our company. So how to become a CSMC price data collector?

If you want to become a price collector, you need to meet one of the following conditions.

(1) Offical employees of CSMC

(2) On-the-job employees of steel trading market operators in various regions (the primary source)

(3) On-the-job employees of the trade departments of large steel mills (individual identity)

(4) On-the-job staff of universities and scientific research institutes on long-term research on market prices, futures, etc

(5) The freelancers who are familiar with steel products and interested in steel price data, and hope to contribute to international trade

Interested parties can send to cs@chinasteelmarket.com to apply to become one of them.

2. Official public quotations from large steel mills

Many large steel mills have their official websites, and some steel factories will publicly update price information on their websites. CSMC will pay attention to whether their quotations are updated every day. After confirming the update, it will collect and publish the latest quotation information on the website.

The steel mills that publicly update their quotations have different update cycles. Some steel mills update once a month, some once weekly, and some once daily. Therefore, to ensure the accuracy of CSMC's daily price update, we will also directly inquire about the current day's price from the steel mill by telephone or email. We use this data as a supplement to this price source.

In addition, some steel factories have a close cooperative relationship with CSMC. They will send product catalogs and the latest quotations to CSMC daily or weekly. It is also a form of data provenance.

There are some examples for showing the information we acquired from the official website and the quotations of the steel factories.

Figure 3 The emails used by the manufacturer for quotations

Figure 4 Manufacturer quotation email attachment

Figure 5 Quotation list on the official website of the manufacturer

3. Quotations from certified primary distributors of large steel mills

Quotations from distributors of large steel mills are a significant part of the CSMC price data source.

These primary dealers need to provide their identity documents when cooperating with CSMC. In the fields of steel bulk trading and spot trading, the price data obtained in this way will be more accurate and more flexible than the public quotation information of large steel mills, and it is also suitable for steel products that need to be customized.

To prevent these dealers from adding subjective factors to their quotations, resulting in unobjective price feedback, CSMC would collect these quotations from more than two dealers in the same city for the same steel products. But at the same time, CSMC will always keep objective and independent and will never affect the dealer quotation. These distributors will also open the inventory system to CSMC, which allows customers clearly understand our spot supply capacity at some time. Since first-tier (large) distributors have provided assistance to CSMC in price data collection, in return, CSMC's spot transactions and self-operated product sales will be more inclined to cooperate with these distributors when purchasing.

The followings are some examples of the price information we get from our distributors over the country.

Figure 6,7,8,9 Quotations of various distributors

Based on the above content, you can know the sources of CSMC price information. Our sources of price information are highly accurate and reliable. You can trust us completely. In addition, we sincerely invite you to leave valuable comments and advice on our website. We will follow your comments and advice at any time on our website. 

CSMC-Empowering small and medium-scale steel purchasing.

Editor: Gianna 

Mail:    gianna@chinasteelmarket.com