Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
June 8, 2016
A reminder that I will be in New York City beginning on Monday, June 13th and Tuesday, June 14th. I have a number of commitments but, if you would like to get together with me please shoot me an email: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com or you can text me while in NYC at: 770-596-6268. I will be at the Platts steel meeting on Monday morning, CME Group event on Monday afternoon and the Bank of America Merrill Lynch dinner on Monday evening. You may also come across me in the Sheraton Hotel lobby on Tuesday which is where the Steel Success Strategies meeting is being held.
Our next Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals workshop will be held in Memphis, Tennessee on November 15 & 16, 2016. The workshop will include a full tour of the Big River Steel mill and a special networking/dinner with key Big River Steel people. We already have 9 reservations for this workshop and I expect it to sell out very quickly. We should have our registration page up and running by later today or at the latest on Friday of this week. If you have any questions please contact us at: 800-432-3475.
As many of you are well aware, one of our data suppliers for our Comparison Price Indices pulled out late last year. Since then we have been operating using our own data and that of two other indexes: SteelBenchmarker and Platts. At this point in time I think the data is more valuable to our readers in other formats (our futures articles for example) and I am thinking of removing the Comparison Price Indices article from our Sunday evening edition of SMU. Before I do that I wanted to give our readers a heads up and allow you to voice any objections that you might have. You can do so by sending me an email at: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com.
We have had a strong week of registrations for our Steel Summit Conference. We are now about 120 registrations ahead of last year’s pace. We encourage everyone interested in attending to register early and to book your hotel room early as we expect the hotel block to be sold out quickly and the hotel itself to be full. There is another Marriott property across the street so I think we will be able to handle everyone but you never know… You can register online: www.SteelMarketUpdate.com in the Events section of the website or you are welcome to contact our offices at: 800-432-3475.
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
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!