Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
April 16, 2014
Our Steel 101 workshop on May 6-7, 2014 is sold out and we have a three person waiting list. We are working on two more workshops to be conducted over the balance of the year and we will advise the dates and locations once we have worked out all of the details. Our goal is to conduct one during the summer months (probably August) and another one in early October.
As mentioned in a prior publication we have settled on the dates for our new Managing Price Risk 2: Strategies & Execution workshop. The dates are June 24 & 25, 2014 and the workshop will be conducted at the CME building in downtown Chicago. We are working on some final details and hope to be able to open registration very soon.
My article on steel sales: How to go from being noticed to getting orders, has created a lot of emails and social media contacts. I appreciate the communication and stories of your own. Please feel free to provide your thoughts and suggestions from your career which might help mentor someone new to the industry. I intend to follow up the article with one or more articles centered on sales with the next one coming in Sunday evening’s Steel Market Update.
Premium members – we should have the survey results on the website by no later than mid-morning on Friday. I am also working on our next service center inventory excess or deficit forecast which I hope to share with you on Friday as well.
If anyone is interested in learning more about the benefits of being a Premium member please do not hesitate to give me a call (800-432-3475) or send me an email: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com.
This offer is not inclusive to just existing members. If you are currently on a free trial and would like to know more about any of our products – three newsletters, Premium, Executive and Monthly – as well as our workshops and conferences – please give me a call or send me an email.
As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, Publisher
John Packard
Read more from John PackardLatest in Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Getting back to the price increases I mentioned at the top of this article, to what extent are they aimed at raising prices and to what extent are they aimed at stopping the bleeding that was happening in the second half of May, before President Trump announced the 50% tariff?
Final Thoughts
We just wrapped another Steel 101 Workshop, where you take what you learned in the classroom into the steel mill.
Final Thoughts
Steel equities and steel futures fell hard after news broke earlier this week that the US and Mexico might reach an agreement that would result in the 50% Section 232 tariff coming off Mexican steel. The sharp declines didn’t make much sense, especially if, as some reports indicate, Mexico might agree to a fixed quota. They didn't make sense even if steel flows between the US and Mexico remain unchanged.
Final Thoughts
Even before the news about Mexico, I didn’t want to overstate the magnitude of the change in momentum. As far as we could tell, there hadn’t been a frenzy of new ordering following President Trump’s announcement of 50% Section 232 tariffs. But higher tariffs had unquestionably raised prices for imports, which typically provide the floor for domestic pricing. We’d heard, for example, that prices below $800 per short ton for hot-rolled (HR) coil were gone from the domestic market – even for larger buyers.
Final Thoughts
I want to draw your attention to SMU’s monthly scrap market survey. It’s a premium feature that complements our long-running steel market survey. We’ve been running our scrap survey since late January. And over just that short time, it’s become a valuable way not only for us to assess where scrap prices might go but also to quantify some of the “fuzzy” indicators - like sentiment and flows - that help to put the price in context.