Forest2Market Adds Market Trend Information to Mill2Market

Forest2Market announced today that it has added new features to Mill2Market, its weekly lumber price report. In its improved format, Mill2Market reports weekly weighted average lumber prices, the exact size of increase or decrease from the previous week’s prices, and a series of snapshots that provide insight into the broader lumber market.

Among the new features is a Weekly Volume Change indicator that displays the week-over-week movement in volume. This indicator--never before available in the industry--provides Forest2Market customers with a clearer perception of short-term demand trends. “In the new report, we also supply our customers with longer term trend information” said Suzanne Hearn, Director of Marketing. “Every week, we add an additional week of data to our historical time-series graph of composite orders, shipments and price. From this, our customers can identify long-term trends of supply and demand movements and their relationship to lumber prices.”

Other features include a Market Price Variation field, which graphically shows how much play there is between high and low pricing in the market for a given lumber product. “Knowing both the weighted average price and whether there is significant difference between low and high prices is a powerful tool,” said Hearn. “When there is significant variance between the highest price and the lowest price paid during the week, our customers know they have a lot of flexibility when they are making pricing decisions; if little variation was seen during the week, they know they need to stay right around the weighted average price.”

The improved report also includes Mid-Week Price Trend and Mid-Week Volume Trend indications that show the during-the-week trend in both price and volume. Users of the report now know whether price and volume were heading up or down during the week, and how sharply.

“In the lumber business, decisions have to be made quickly,” said Hearn. “By giving our customers graphical representations of key market movements, we help them streamline the information gathering stage of the decision making process. As a result, our customers have the insight they need to make exponentially better decisions.”