Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
May 9, 2014
Last week was a busy week with scrap prices for May coming into focus, our beginning of May flat rolled steel survey having been completed and getting more information about the possible sale of the Severstal NA assets made for an interesting week. On top of that SMU conducted one of our Steel 101 workshops. We have a busy issue for a Sunday evening and our Premium Level customers will receive another special supplemental issue tomorrow with a number of articles (plus our survey power point is now online).
Last week I interviewed Saikat Dey who is the CEO of Severstal North America. During our interview we touched on a number of subjects. One of the subjects was foreign imports. Dey told SMU, “I am not against imports as long as they are fair. What is not supportable is unfair trade practices.” He told us, “Imports are symptoms of world over-capacity.” However, he felt that some in the steel industry have become “obsessed” with the subject and have begun to lose focus. North American steel mills have become, “myopic in our view of the world…The steel mills are too focused on Washington and what they can do for us instead of what we can do for ourselves.”
A reminder to those of you who are interested in expanding your knowledge about hot rolled coil derivatives and the various strategies which can be used to protect margins or inventory values, offer long-term fixed pricing, etc. and how to execute those strategies – we invite you to participate in our new Managing Price Risk II: Strategies & Execution workshop which will be held in Chicago on June 24 & 25th. More details can be found on our website. Note: This is not the same as our original Managing Price Risk workshop. The new workshop is geared toward identifying solutions to a specific goal and then working on executing trades (and what to do in various scenarios). If you have specific questions we recommend you contact Andre Marshall of Crunchrisk, LLC. Andre can be reached at: Andre.Marshall@crunchrisk.com or by phone at: 713-401-9146.
We also want to remind our readers that Steel Market Update will be conducting a Steel Summit Conference on September 3 & 4, 2014 in Atlanta, Georgia. We are completing our program and should have announcements out very soon.
As always your business 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!