Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
December 23, 2016
Happy Holidays and welcome back to all of you who celebrated Christmas on Sunday or the beginnings of Hanukkah on Saturday evening. Most of the steel industry appears to still be on Holiday and not working through the New Year festivities. So, it was a fairly quiet day in the Steel Market Update offices around the country.
I did get an interesting email from one buyer who laid out some of the foreign steel offers his company has seen over the past week or so. we learned the cheapest hot rolled offers into Houston are $28.20/cwt to $29.35/cwt coming out of eastern Europe and the Middle East/North Africa.
We learned cold rolled prices have increased recently with Russia at the low end at $32.95/cwt Houston and Turkey at the high end at $33.95/cwt Houston.
Galvanized prices into Houston were running from a low of a $36.95/cwt base out of Russia, Brazil and POSCO Thailand around $37.20/cwt base.
We will have a Premium supplemental issue on Wednesday for our Premium members. Also, don’t forget that our flat rolled market trends analysis results from last week are on our website.
We will publish another Executive level newsletter on Thursday of this week before taking a New Year’s hiatus returning on Tuesday, January 3rd to our regular publishing schedule.
Important dates to remember for 2017: August 28, 29, 30 which are the dates for our 7th Steel Summit Conference in Atlanta. Dr. Alan Beaulieu of the Institute for Trends Research and Dr. Chris Kuehl of Armada Corporate Intelligence will join us and around 500 others associated with the steel industry as we try to understand the challenges and opportunities the industry will have in store for us as we move into 2018. Mark your calendars now.
For those of you who may have an interest, we have limited sponsorship opportunities available as well as a number of exhibitor opportunities for the 2017 conference. Contact us at: info@SteelMarketUpdate.com for information.
As always your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, Publisher

John Packard
Read more from John PackardLatest in Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts
Is outer space steel's final frontier?

Final Thoughts
President Trump’s tariff policies have a lot more in common with a roundabout than you’d think.

Final Thoughts
The difference: The spat with Turkey was a big deal for steel. This time, the 50% reciprocal tariff for Brazil – if it goes into effect as threatened on Aug.1 – hits everything from coffee and to pig iron. It seems almost custom-built to inflict as much pain as possible on Brazil.

Final Thoughts
Are we on the cusp of sorting out the tariff situation, or is this merely another round in the bout?

Final Thoughts
I’m not sure how many different ways I can write that it’s been a quiet market ahead of Independence Day. There are variations on that theme. I’ve heard everything from the ominous “eerily quiet” to "getting better" and even the occasional “blissfully unaware” (because I’m enjoying my vacation).