The scrap trade says warmer months pay best. We tested that against five years of our own price series and found the opposite: January was the strongest month for copper, aluminium and brass, March for ferrous, and June and July were the weakest for all four. Before anyone reorganises their year around that, the sample is five observations per month and it covers an unusual period, so the finding is interesting rather than bankable.
Scrap Price Today market analysis, written from exchange settlement data, mill and refiner pricing practice and published policy documents. Figures are examples; today's numbers are on the live scrap price board.
Both things can be true, and the reason they are is the most useful part of this.
The claim we tested
Yard and industry sources are consistent. Construction and manufacturing ramp up in spring, mills buy more, and prices firm from roughly April to September. Winter brings weather delays, mill maintenance outages and thinner spot demand, so prices soften.
It is a coherent story with an obvious mechanism, and it appears in almost every article on the subject.
What our series actually shows
We took month-end closes across five years of our derived daily series and averaged the change for each calendar month.
| Metal | Strongest month | Average | Weakest month | Average | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Copper | January | +4.05% | July | -2.40% | 6.45 points |
| Aluminium | January | +4.82% | June | -5.96% | 10.78 points |
| Ferrous | March | +6.98% | June | -4.92% | 11.90 points |
| Brass | January | +3.66% | July | -2.53% | 6.19 points |
The monthly detail sharpens it. Copper rose in four of five Januaries and four of five Decembers, and fell in four of five Julies. Ferrous rose in four of five Marches and never once rose in May across the whole window, a clean sweep of five negative months.
On this evidence the strong stretch runs from November through March, and the weak one from April through August. That is close to the reverse of the standard advice.
Why both accounts can be right
The trade sources are describing something real, but it is not price.
Read them closely and they are mostly about material flow: cold weather, shorter days and wet ground reduce demolition, farm clearances and construction, so less metal arrives at the scales in winter. Spring and early summer bring a surge of collection. That is a description of supply reaching yards, not of what the exchange is paying.
Our board is derived from exchange settlements and a national index. Those are set by global refined metal balances, mine supply, trade policy and currency, none of which care whether it is convenient to load a trailer in your driveway.
So the honest reconciliation is this: seasonality is strong in when scrap gets collected, and weak and unreliable in what it is worth. Local yard behaviour can still follow the trade story, since a yard short of material in February may bid up to attract it, and that is a different mechanism again.
The limitations, stated before anyone acts on this
We are publishing a finding that contradicts industry consensus, so the caveats matter more than usual.
- Five observations per month. That is a small sample by any standard. A single unusual year can dominate an average.
- The window is not typical. It includes a major commodity shock and a period in which copper rose more than 50 percent, and those moves land in particular months and skew the averages.
- Ferrous changed method. Our ferrous series now follows a national scrap index rather than finished steel futures, which we corrected during this rebuild, so its older history is not measured on the same basis throughout.
- Month-end closes, not averages. A single volatile day at a month boundary moves a whole observation.
- No statistical significance test. With five observations, most of these differences would not survive one.
Anyone presenting a five-observation monthly average as a trading rule is misusing it, including us if we framed it that way.
What is reliably bigger than any month
This is where the argument resolves into something you can act on.
Sorting a mixed load typically returns 15 to 25 percent more, because each grade is paid at its own price. The best-to-worst monthly spread we measured is 6 to 12 percentage points, and that is an average rather than something you can count on in any given year.
So the ranking holds: preparation beats grade selection, grade selection beats volume tiers, and all three beat timing. Our test of whether waiting pays reached the same conclusion from a different direction, and the preparation guide covers the work that actually moves the number.
Where seasonality genuinely does affect you
Not through price, but through everything around it.
- Yard competition. A yard short of material in a quiet month may pay up to attract it. Ask.
- Storage. Material held outdoors through winter gains moisture and rust, and both cost you at the scale. That loss is real and immediate, unlike a hoped-for seasonal gain.
- Theft risk. Non-ferrous held for months is exposed. Faster turnover is often safer than waiting for a better window.
- Your own logistics. Loading and hauling in poor weather is slower and more dangerous, which is a cost even if the price is identical.
For most sellers, those four outweigh the calendar entirely.
The short version
Sell when the material is ready, sorted and dry. If you are a large or regular seller with covered storage and flexibility, our data suggests the late autumn to early spring window has been stronger than the trade consensus claims, and you might lean that way while treating it as a tilt rather than a rule.
If you are a household or occasional seller, the calendar is the least important variable you have.
What this metal pays around the world
Scrap is a global market priced in US dollars, but what reaches a seller depends on trade position, freight to the nearest consumer and how many buyers compete locally. The table below converts the same grade into each market’s own currency and units at the day’s exchange rate, and shows the factor we apply.
| Market | Local price | USD per lb | Market factor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turkey | ₺645.55 / kg | $6.04 | 1.04 |
| Germany | €11.25 / kg | $5.93 | 1.02 |
| United States | $5.81 / lb | $5.81 | 1.00 |
| China | CN¥84.35 / kg | $5.69 | 0.98 |
| Canada | C$7.79 / lb | $5.64 | 0.97 |
| United Kingdom | £9.10 / kg | $5.58 | 0.96 |
| Australia | A$16.89 / kg | $5.52 | 0.95 |
| United Arab Emirates | AED44.69 / kg | $5.52 | 0.95 |
| Saudi Arabia | SAR44.67 / kg | $5.40 | 0.93 |
| India | ₹1,114 / kg | $5.35 | 0.92 |
| Bangladesh | ৳1,386 / kg | $5.11 | 0.88 |
| South Africa | R173.74 / kg | $4.94 | 0.85 |
Method
The monthly figures are calculated from our own derived daily series: the last close of each month compared with the last close of the previous month, averaged by calendar month across the available history, with five observations per month for most metals and six for two ferrous months.
The series themselves are built from exchange settlements and published index data using recovery shares documented on our editorial policy page, with live figures on the board. The trade claims we tested are drawn from published yard and industry commentary.
We publish this because the calculation is easy to check and because a contrary result is worth more than another repetition of the consensus. It is not a forecast, and five years is not enough history to make it one.