Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
April 7, 2014
For Thursday night’s issue my goal is to attempt to produce as accurate lead times for each mill as possible. This is easy for some mills who publish lead times on a weekly or, in at least one case, daily basis. Other mills hold the information a little closer to the vest. If you have lead time information from one or more of your mill suppliers I would appreciate if you are able to share that data with me. If you have received information verbally from your mill please shoot me an email. In light of the market being a little spooked by all of the production issues, I think it will help if we can get our arms around lead times and calm those frayed nerves a bit.
I hope that the US Steel article discussing the status of their two plants was helpful in allaying any fears that might be cropping up with those companies who do not do direct mill business or may be doing business with mills other than USS.
A note about Steel 101 – our workshop on the steelmaking and market fundamentals for both long and flat products is almost sold out. We have one (1) spot left before we are required to close the workshop. If you need more details you can get them on our website or by contacting our office.
Our traffic to the website is picking up. I actually have a neat feature when I am in the back end of our website I can see how many people are logged in and can keep track of the flow of visitors. I believe there are two reasons why traffic is improving: our members are realizing that we are putting articles to the front of the website prior to publication. There were actually a couple of articles which were edited as mill announcements were made so that the information would be as up to date as possible for our readers. The second reason our traffic is growing is Google finally realized and recognized SMU as a news organization. Thank you Mr. Google.
For those of you who are LinkedIn members. You are welcome to join our LinkedIn group which is conveniently called: Steel Market Update. You are also welcome to link with me on my personal page although I tend to post most articles and information on our group page.
We also have an active Twitter account (and no, I don’t tell you what I had for lunch or what the weather is like…). We tweet out every blog post that we get.
We are working with our developers on a RSS feed that is effective for our members. I had a comment from one recently who reminded me that it is not possible to keep checking the website all day long for updates – and when breaking news happens he did want us to provide some way of sending a notice to those registered to get notices. We should get this handled in the next couple of weeks. It will not be automatic – it will be something you have to register for (or opt in) as we do not want to be sending everyone a bunch of stuff they don’t want.
Its been another in a long line of hectic days. I want to thank you again for your business as it is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, Publisher
John Packard
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Final thoughts
SMU has heard from some larger buyers who have stepped back into the market to buy at prices that, if not at a bottom, they assess to be close to one. Is it enough to stretch out lead times and send prices upward again? Or do we continue to scrape along the mid-$600s per short ton (st) as we have been doing for most of the last month?
Final thoughts
Cleveland-Cliffs Chairman, President and CEO Lourenco Goncalves had some insightful things to say today about the steel market and about a conference we suspect might be Steel Summit.
Final thoughts
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, when you add in some commentary from respected peers in the steel industry to those pictures, that may shoot you up to five thousand words, at least. In that spirit, we’ve added some snapshots from our market survey this week, along with some comments from market participants.
Final thoughts
I thought we’d have more clarity this week on Section 232, Mexico, and a potential carve-out for steel melted and poured in Brazil. As of right now, the only official comment I have is from the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR).
Final thoughts
There are just 40 days left until the 2024 SMU Steel Summit gets underway on Aug. 26 at the Georgia International Convention Center (GICC) in Atlanta. And I’m pleased to announce that it's official now: More than 1,000 people have registered to at attend! Another big development: The desktop version of the networking app for the event has officially launched!