Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
August 25, 2017
It’s the night before the start of our 7th SMU Steel Summit Conference in Atlanta. We are prepared and ready to go, but our thoughts and prayers are with those trapped in Houston and the surrounding communities in Texas. There are a great many people registered for our conference who are coming from the areas hit by flooding and are now unable to make it to Atlanta. We wish them and their families well and we encourage everyone to contribute to the American Red Cross or similar type organization. You can contribute to the Red Cross at www.RedCross.org.
There are not many words left – our conference starts tomorrow. Our team will be busy setting up in both the convention center and the Marriott Gateway Hotel beginning early in the morning.
A special thanks to our team: Ray Culley who has been leading the charge for many months, Brett Linton who is my right-hand man of all trades, Diana Packard and Alison Lalonde who keep track of the money (or lack thereof), Sandy Williams, Tim Triplett and Peter Wright who keep the newsletter going when my focus is elsewhere along with Steve Painter, John Eckstein, Mario Briccetti and Jeff Lalonde who help keep everything organized during the chaos.
A note that Tuesday’s newsletter will be much shorter than normal and will not have our price indices as we will hold off collecting pricing data until the conclusion of our conference. Our prices will be published on Thursday. Thank you for your understanding.
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
SMU's hot-rolled (HR) coil price slipped this week to $685 per short ton (st) on average. We also adjusted our sheet momentum indicators to lower for the first time since July.
Final Thoughts
When a mapmaker constructs a map, it’s always to the contours of the land. Or sea. That is, the mapmaker doesn’t say, “Look, these rocks really don’t belong here, so I’m not going to include them in the harbor map.” Uncharted rocks, sink ships (along with loose lips).
Final Thoughts
We had an October surprise here at SMU on Wednesday. I was working from the CRU office in Pittsburgh, and the internet connection briefly went out. As luck would have it, that happened smack in the middle of a live Community Chat webinar. Fortunately, my colleague David Schollaert stepped in, Zekelman Industries CEO Barry Zekelman rolled with the punches – and the show went on. Could there be any more October surprises in store for us and for the steel market?
Final Thoughts
We just wrapped up another Steel 101 workshop, easily the most hands-on industry workshop on steelmaking and market fundamentals, in this humble opinion. Last week on Tuesday and Wednesday, SMU’s Steel 101 was held in Starkville, Miss.
Final Thoughts
Everybody has an opinion about politics these days. More importantly for our readers, though, every business has a bottom line. A popular question in our most recent steel buyers survey asked how uncertainty around the upcoming US presidential election could affect that line.