On Wednesday, July 25th – Steel Market Update in partnership with Andre Marshall of Crunch Risk and in association with our friends at the CME Group will hold a one-day workshop about Managing Price Risk. During the workshop we will discuss and familiarize those present with the differences between Hedging and Speculation; Futures, Options and Swaps; trading terminology and how trades are made through the exchange (CME) or Over-the-Counter (SWAPS). Our workshop attracts manufacturing companies, service centers, trading companies, steel mills and other brokers in the space. The workshop is held at the Chicago Board of Trade in downtown Chicago and a tour of the CME trading floor is part of our program. We encourage anyone interested in learning more about how to Manage Price Risk – be it inventory risk, margin risk or a desire to procure long-term fixed pricing – to attend our workshop. Details are on our website: www.SteelMarketUpdate.com or you can contact us in our office: info@SteelMarketUpdate.com or 800-432-3475. Registrations are available online or through our office and discounts are available online for SMU member companies. We also offer those who have attended previous Hedging Price Risk workshops or other members of their company a special rate for the July 25th program only. Contact our office for more details: 800-432-3475.

Our next Steel 101: Introduction to Steelmaking & Market Fundamentals workshop will be held on Thursday and Friday – September 20th and 21st in Ontario, California. A tour of the nearby California Steel Industries (CSI) steel mill will be part of our program. Our two-day program takes you through the steelmaking process from raw materials, Blast/BOF and Electric Arc Furnace iron & steel production for both flat and long products (slab, billets, blooms). We then go through the flat rolled rolling process discussing hot rolled, pickled & oiled, cold rolled (full hard & annealed), galvanized and other coated products. Then you are taken by motor coach to California Steel where you will be able to witness the rolling process from slab through to finished sheet products.

We finish off the first day with a networking/cocktail party where you can ask one-on-one questions of the instructors and our invited guests from California Steel.

On the second day we cover the rolling process for long products and then we move into the Market Fundamental segments of our program. We discuss many of the topics discussed in the media – commodities and their impact on steel pricing, how steel is bought and sold, understanding global and domestic demand drivers, identifying risks in the supply chain and available tools and resources which are available to those who know where to look. You can learn more about our program and our highly experienced instructors on our website: www.SteelMarketUpdate.com . Registration is now open with discounts for SMU member companies, multiple attendees from the same company and those able to register prior to August 17th.

This year will be the 3rd year Steel Market Update will conduct our Steel Summit conference. The date to remember is October 8th and the location will be Chicago (Rosemont, IL – right next to O’Hare airport). As in past years we are on the Monday prior to the opening of METALCON which this year will be held in the Donald Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont. We have a great program again this year with some returning faces (such as Timna Tanners of Bank of America Merrill Lynch and John Anton of IHS Global Insight) as well as some new faces. We will have more information about the location, registration and the full program over the next couple of weeks. This year registration will be both through our website as well as through the METALCON website. Save the date – October 8, 2012.