Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
October 3, 2014
I will take a moment to recommend the Armada Corporate Intelligence report and the Armada website as something those in the marketing sections of your company may want to subscribe to. The cost is negligible and the value is quite high in my opinion. A good example is on their website on Saturday, October 4th they had an article about the Credit Managers Index. In the article they talk about the drop in the index and its relationship to predicting future PMI (purchasing managers index) direction. The latest CMI dropped significantly and, according to Armada, “This was not a small reversal of fortune by any stretch of the imagination, this could be termed a collapse and it begs a very important question. Who is correct – the Purchasing Managers Index or the Credit Managers Index?” You can read the full Armada Flash Advance Report by clicking here.
On Monday we will begin our early October flat rolled steel market survey. Invitations should go out around 8 AM ET.
I will be out of the office on Monday afternoon and all day Tuesday and Wednesday as we are conducting one of our Steel 101 workshops in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Diana and Brett will be in the office to answer any questions you might have.
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
I’m trying to make sure this is not a TL;DR Final Thoughts. As a journalism school professor once told me, ‘No one but your mom reads more than 1,000 words.’ Also, as the old adage goes, a picture is worth a thousand as well. With that in mind, below are a couple of charts that I think go a long way toward explaining how prices and lead times have been relatively stable despite concerns about demand.
Final Thoughts
It’s another week of big headlines for the world writ large – an expanding war in the Middle East, another potentially catastrophic hurricane – and not much going on in the world of steel prices. “Call me Stevie Wonder, I see nothing.” That’s how one service center executive described the current sheet market. There seems to be almost a competition among some of our Community Chat guests and contributors to outdo each other in flowery ways to say, “
Final Thoughts
Surprise, surprise. Forget Halloween, the trend this October is all around the unexpected. Known as the “October Surprise,” you never know what is in store for you in the month before a US presidential election. Still, if we pull back the dial back date-wise a little bit, a familiar theme has been added to the mix: kick the can.
Final Thoughts
Another day, another massive gap between the news and market sentiment. On the news side, we’ve got war in the Middle East. The devastation facing western North Carolina coming into tragic focus. And the outcome of the presidential election remains a coin toss, according to current polling.
Final thoughts
There are markets where the headlines and the prices are both crazy. This does not appear to be one of them, at least not yet.