A waffling North American softwood lumber market started to settle down last week, as the Madison’s price graphs showed in our previous issue.

On May 2 this year, Madison’s took the bold step — and one we do not tread upon lightly — of declaring a new floor on prices of benchmark North American softwood lumber commodity WSPF KD 2×4 #2&Btr, of US$500 mfbm. We suggest this might be a new reality for the next approximately 18 months or so:

https://twitter.com/LumberNews/status/991755274309455872

The latest US housing and real estate data, showing unstoppable demand and ever-shrinking inventories, support Madison’s assertion.

Current Softwood Lumber Prices Compared to Recent and Historical Highs

Order files at most sawmills were down to two weeks at best, which is quite robust for this time of year historically but a significant drop from the six weeks or so of most of 2018 so far. Its very likely that long-ago produced wood from February and such has finally wound it’s way through the convoluted mess that has been Canadian railway transport for the past almost year.

Price expectations between buyers and sellers varied widely; few actual orders were booked.

Parts of Quebec seemed to be down this week, either for usual seasonal maintenance or holiday breaks.

At the moment it looks like producers, wholesalers and resellers, and end-user customers are all taking time to go over their inventory, their accounts, their expected needs, and these sometimes wildly-swinging prices. This summer season will show where softwood lumber commodity prices actually land for 2018.

We can only hope the wildfire season this year will not be a severe as 2017, which would throw even more uncertainty into sawmill and other forestry operators’ plans for the rest of this year.