Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts

Written by John Packard


As we head into the Good Friday and Easter weekend holiday we want to wish everyone an enjoyable time with family and friends. Steel Market Update will not publish a newsletter on Sunday so our next official publication will be on Tuesday evening of next week.

Even so, that should not prevent you for communicating with us over the weekend. We will respond to your calls and we always respond to our emails.

Speaking of emails we have been getting a number of positive comments over the past couple of days.

“SMU Team, happy Thursday, I want to tell you that I treat your reports as my bible. Thank you for your in-depth analysis and diverse topics.” Linda Ortepi, Corporate Buyer-Raw Materials, Kirchoff Automotive.

 We also saw a comment this morning from someone on a free trial, “Peter, first of all thank you for article and aggregated data. It certainly helps to explain why HRC has diverged so strongly from long products on the recent pricing trend.” He then went on to ask a question about the classification of one of the long products.

Readers enjoy our newsletter for a wide variety of reasons and we enjoy hearing from you. Recently we heard from a small service center who told us they used our Price Estimator on our website to help them value their inventory at the end of the month. Creative and independent way to keep the banks and bankers happy…

If you enjoy Steel Market Update drop us a line. We would love to hear from you: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com

If for some reason you are not pleased – I want to hear from you so we can address whatever your concern(s) might be.

Please stay safe over the weekend and I will be the one with the bike shorts and helmet zipping around South Florida’s bike paths.

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.