Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts

Written by John Packard


We will be in Iowa next week for one of our Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals workshops. We are looking forward to working with SSAB again, as we did a workshop in Mobile, Alabama and toured their Alabama facility. This is our first trip to Iowa.

We are working on ironing out the details on our next Steel 101 workshop which is expected to be in the south in January 2016. We will provide details once they are available.

We also intend to provide more details from last week’s flat rolled steel market analysis in Tuesday evening’s edition of our newsletter.

For our Premium members we will provide our Key Market Indicators in tomorrow’s Premium supplemental issue.

This week will be a busy week for the industry as both US Steel and ArcelorMittal are back at the negotiation tables with the United Steelworkers, as we reported in one of tonight’s articles we will learn if Fiat Chrysler workers vote not to accept the contract and we will have the beginning of negotiations on ferrous scrap prices which are expected to plummet $20 to $50 per gross ton.

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

John Packard, Publisher

Latest in Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts

As Wolfe Research’s Timna Tanners put it in her opening talk at Tampa on Monday afternoon, we’re living in a world of “Trumplications” now. That probably means – at least in the short term – higher scrap costs, lower imports from countries hit with or threated tariffs, and higher steel prices. SMU data reflects that. Scrap went up in January. More than 75% of the respondents to our more recent survey expect scrap to go up again February, maybe by a lot. Lead times, meanwhile, have been ticking upward this month. It started with hot-rolled coil and plate earlier this month. Now we’re seeing coated lead times extending too.