Final Thoughts

August 26, 2015

We are in the “home stretch” as our 5th Steel Summit Conference is just over the horizon. We continue to work on the finishing touches, checking to make sure we have all the speaker presentations (a number of them are waiting until the last minute so the presentation is in sync with world and domestic events) and gathering all of the equipment/publications, etc. we need to bring to the conference. A few more hair-raising (except for me) days and it will be go time.

A note for those who have not noticed. We have added a Managing Price Risk II workshop which will be held in New York City at the CME Group building on November 11-12th. We have opened registration and we will have much more information on the website after the conclusion of next week’s conference.

And our Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals workshop in October is also open for registration. More details can be found by clicking here.

We are of the opinion that buyers need to be very careful over the next few weeks. The combination of UAW and USW contract negotiations could provide some very interesting scenarios. I was speaking with a consultant friend of mine recently who made the observation that many of the steel buyers out there today have never lived through a strike or supply squeeze created by a mill being shut down. The last one was in the mid 1980’s – 20 years ago.

At the same time we could see the market go in the opposite direction should one of the automotive companies be hit by a strike. An automotive strike could create extra line time on the mills and this may even be exacerbated if all of the mills built an extra 30 days worth of inventories in order to protect their automotive customers against a steel strike/lockout scenario.

Now is a good time to keep your eyes and ears open (and to stay tuned to SMU).

As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.

John Packard, Publisher