Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
June 7, 2017
For those of you either attending or thinking of attending the 2017 SMU Steel Summit Conference in Atlanta on August 28, 29 & 30th our room block at the host hotel, which is the Atlanta Airport Marriott Gateway Hotel located next to the Georgia International Convention Center (GICC). Even though our room block is complete the hotel still has a minimal number of rooms and, as of Wednesday, June 7th the room rate was $249 per night plus taxes.
We have also booked all of the rooms blocked at the SpringHill Suites Gateway Hotel which is located across the street from the Marriott and GICC. Like the Marriott the SpringHill Suites Hotel has a limited number of rooms available which can be booked through their website for $159 per night (as of Wednesday, June 7th rates subject to change).
Our room block at the Atlanta Airport Renaissance Gateway Hotel is still available and the SMU room block rate is $154 per night. This hotel is brand new (opened a couple of weeks ago) and is located directly across the street from the host Marriott hotel. You can go directly to the Renaissance registration page that has our rate by clicking here.
We expect all of our room blocks to be sold out within the next 7-10 days. Once they have been exhausted we will not be able to guarantee our special rates and rooms will need to be booked through the hotel website (they are all owned by Marriott).
A note to those wanting to get our weekly plate price indices we will begin posting the data on our website once we have six months of history. I want to make sure that our data is consistent and accurate and that we have a bit of history to share. The six month time period is coming up soon so you can expect to see plate pricing under the “Pricing” tab on our website.
If anyone is still interested in attending our Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals workshop in Ontario, California we have a couple of seats still available. We have an interesting class with one of our attendees traveling all the way from Singapore. We will tour the California Steel Industries steel mill as part of our class. You can find details on our website.
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
Now that the USS/Nippon deal has been completed, what's next?
Final Thoughts
Getting back to the price increases I mentioned at the top of this article, to what extent are they aimed at raising prices and to what extent are they aimed at stopping the bleeding that was happening in the second half of May, before President Trump announced the 50% tariff?
Final Thoughts
We just wrapped another Steel 101 Workshop, where you take what you learned in the classroom into the steel mill.
Final Thoughts
Steel equities and steel futures fell hard after news broke earlier this week that the US and Mexico might reach an agreement that would result in the 50% Section 232 tariff coming off Mexican steel. The sharp declines didn’t make much sense, especially if, as some reports indicate, Mexico might agree to a fixed quota. They didn't make sense even if steel flows between the US and Mexico remain unchanged.
Final Thoughts
Even before the news about Mexico, I didn’t want to overstate the magnitude of the change in momentum. As far as we could tell, there hadn’t been a frenzy of new ordering following President Trump’s announcement of 50% Section 232 tariffs. But higher tariffs had unquestionably raised prices for imports, which typically provide the floor for domestic pricing. We’d heard, for example, that prices below $800 per short ton for hot-rolled (HR) coil were gone from the domestic market – even for larger buyers.