Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
August 28, 2017
Good evening from Atlanta, site of our 7th SMU Steel Summit Conference. We announced this morning that attendance for this conference is a new record. We are pleased to announce we registered 661 manufacturing, steel and industry executives for this year’s conference, breaking last year’s 434 record.
Our “Pre-Summit” Conference program on Monday attracted approximately 400 attendees, and the Monday evening informal cocktail party was over 500 people. Needless to say, a good time was had by all.
Last year, our conference correctly predicted the result of the presidential election as we polled the 2016 Steel Summit attendees and found 48 percent of those respondents reporting their intention to support Donald Trump for president. Only 22 percent advised their intention of voting for Hillary Clinton. This poll was was taken during the last week of August 2016.
Today, Steel Market Update took a new poll asking those attending the 2017 Steel Summit Conference, “My support for Donald Trump as President of the United States is…
Highly Support President = 10 percent.
Still Support President = 38 percent.
Starting to Regret Past Support = 14 percent.
No Longer Support the President = 5 percent.
Never Supported the President = 33 percent.
Responses for this poll were received from 374 steel and manufacturing executives.
We have another full day tomorrow (Wednesday), which is the last day of our conference. We have a strong program, and we will have more about that on Thursday.
A quick note about galvanized coating extras. NLMK USA announced new coating extras on Friday. Their extras have increased by approximately 10 percent, based on a conversation that I had with the mill on Monday. We will have more about galvanized extras in Thursday’s issue of Steel Market Update. We will also publish our price indices on Thursday, as I have been unable to discuss pricing openly with steel buyers and mills while at our conference.
I received a note this evening from one of my trading contacts in China regarding Chinese export price offers. Current hot rolled 2.3mm is being offered at $600-$605 per metric ton, FOB Stowed ($544-$549 per net ton). I was advised that there we no cold rolled or galvanized exports at this time. Billets in Grade 40 quality are being offered at $540 per metric ton, FOB Stowed.
This weekend is a holiday weekend so we will not publish our newsletter on Sunday, but will return to normal publication on Tuesday of next week.
As always, your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard
John Packard
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