Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
December 30, 2017
Happy New Year and welcome back to work. For the first time in many years, I was able to get away and not concentrate all of my time and effort on the steel industry. If you have been trying to reach us between Christmas and New Years, you may have had an issue in locating someone to speak to. I closed the offices for the week as many of our employees weren’t taking all of their vacation time, so I decided it was a good time to force the team to get some rest, as I expect 2018 to be a significant year for the industry and for Steel Market Update.
A couple of quick notes: Our January Steel 101 workshop in Mobile is sold out. Our March Steel 101 workshop, which will be held in Merrillville, Ind., on March 28-29, is about 50 percent sold. The Merrillville workshop will include a tour of the NLMK USA steel mill, which is located in Portage, Ind. You can learn more about the workshop on our website. You are also welcome to call our office at 800-432-3475 or you can contact us at info@SteelMarketUpdate.com.
We have been hard at work on our 8th SMU Steel Summit Conference since before the doors closed on our 2017 conference. The location will be the same, although we are expanding our footprint in the Georgia International Convention Center. We will begin the conference on Monday afternoon Aug. 27 and it will run through Wednesday mid-afternoon Aug. 29. We will begin accepting registrations later this month. We have a number of speakers lined up, but I am going to hold off on announcements until we get closer to releasing the event for registration. Past attendees will be pleased with the quality of our speakers as will those who have never attended an SMU Steel Summit Conference in the past. Our conference is THE event to be seen and to network with others in the industry.
We have only a few sponsor spots left for the 2018 conference. We have plenty of exhibition spaces available. You can inquire about what is available by contacting Jill Waldman at Jill@SteelMarketUpdate.com or me at John@SteelMarketUpdate.com.
I am looking forward to another exciting year in the steel industry.
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
We got a little flack for adjusting our sheet momentum indicators to neutral last week. To be clear, we didn’t adjust them to lower. Part of the reason we moved them to neutral was because there are some unusual cross-currents in the current market. On the news side, you could make a case that there should nowhere to go but up.
Final thoughts
I think all of us know that sometimes courtships go wrong. A misplaced word or deed and soon things can go sideways, and not in the prices sense. Such could be the case with Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel’s play for U.S. Steel.
Final thoughts
We’re starting to see some impacts of the big trade case filed last week against imports of coated flat-rolled steel from 10 nations. Namely, we’ve heard that a range of traders have stopped offering material from Vietnam. An alleged dumping margin of nearly 160% will do that. Especially amid chatter of critical circumstances.
Final thoughts
The phrase “political football” has been tossed around a lot lately. (Pun probably intended.) For the humble journalists at SMU who thought the week following Steel Summit would prove a quiet one… the news cycle had other ideas
Final thoughts
Sheet prices didn’t roar back after Labor Day. But steel market news sure came out of the gate strong (or maybe chaotically is the better way to put it). First, the nearly $15-billion proposed sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel exploded into the news. And when I say exploded, I mean that all sides seem to be escalating things now.