Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
May 30, 2014
We have had a couple of minor bugs but we hope to have registration open for the 2014 SMU Steel Summit Conference by late Monday or Tuesday of this week. The dates for the conference are September 3 & 4 and the location is the Georgia International Convention Center (GICC) which is located right next to the Atlanta International Airport – no need for car rental or taxi’s as there is a light rail shuttle which moves form just outside domestic baggage claim to the hotel we are using (Atlanta Airport Marriott Gateway) and the GICC. First stop and less than a five minute ride from the airport.
We have already announced a number of our speakers and we will continue to do so as the week progresses. So far we have mentioned John Ferriola, Nucor CEO; Timna Tanners, the number 1 rated metals and mining analyst with Bank of America Merrill Lynch and John Anton, Director of Steel Services for IHS Global Insight (Timna and John will be together again for their 4th Steel Summit Conference) and Mike Marley, scrap guru with Metal Prices. The conference will be held over a two day period so we have quite a few speakers yet to announce.
Our 4th Steel Summit is not the only outside item we have working at this moment. Our new Managing Price Risk II: Strategies and Execution workshop will be held in Chicago on June 24 & 25th. Details on the workshop, which is meant to assist those who have basic futures knowledge but would like to learn more about actual hedging strategies and how to execute trades to accomplish specific goals, can be found on our website or you are welcome to contact our office at 800-432-3475.
All of our workshops come with discounts for member companies ($100 per person for both our Steel Summit Conference and Managing Price Risk II workshop).
We are also working on a custom sales program for a service center. If you would like to learn more about what SMU can do for you and your company on a focused and custom basis please contact me at 800-432-3475 or by email: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com
As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update – we hope to see you in Atlanta in September.
John Packard, Publisher
John Packard
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Final thoughts
Cleveland-Cliffs is seeking $750 per short ton (st) for hot-rolled coil. That’s $20/st above where the steelmaker had been. It’s also $30/st above Nucor, which is at $720/st this week. We've seen prices increase incrementally this week. SMU's HR price, for example, stands at $690/st on average, up $5/st from last week. The questions now are whether a number well above $700/st will stick, whether other mills will follow Cliffs, and whether there is enough demand to support higher prices.
Final thoughts
We got a little flack for adjusting our sheet momentum indicators to neutral last week. To be clear, we didn’t adjust them to lower. Part of the reason we moved them to neutral was because there are some unusual cross-currents in the current market. On the news side, you could make a case that there should nowhere to go but up.
Final thoughts
I think all of us know that sometimes courtships go wrong. A misplaced word or deed and soon things can go sideways, and not in the prices sense. Such could be the case with Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel’s play for U.S. Steel.
Final thoughts
We’re starting to see some impacts of the big trade case filed last week against imports of coated flat-rolled steel from 10 nations. Namely, we’ve heard that a range of traders have stopped offering material from Vietnam. An alleged dumping margin of nearly 160% will do that. Especially amid chatter of critical circumstances.
Final thoughts
The phrase “political football” has been tossed around a lot lately. (Pun probably intended.) For the humble journalists at SMU who thought the week following Steel Summit would prove a quiet one… the news cycle had other ideas