Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
February 1, 2016
Correction: CME HRC settlement number for January was $389 per ton, not $398 per ton as we mistakenly identified in our monthly analysis table published in our Sunday evening edition. Unlike Platts and our own SMU hot rolled index, the index used by CME had hot rolled prices dropping by $7 per ton during one of their weekly posts. All of the indexes followed by SMU (Platts, SteelBenchmarker and SMU) had HRC prices rising during the entire month of January. If you have any questions you can contact the CME Group or your bank or broker (such as Andre Marshall or Spencer Johnson) for more details.
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We will also be publishing a Premium supplemental issue of our newsletter with our Key Market Indicators and a couple of other articles tomorrow.
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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!