Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
February 2, 2018
It’s Super Bowl Sunday so my remarks will be very short this evening. Good luck to both teams and their fans.
We have a busy week coming up, which will begin at 8 AM tomorrow (Monday) morning with the invitations to our early February flat rolled steel market trends survey. If you receive an invitation, please answer the first question (or click on the button) to begin the survey process.
I will be in the office all week and can be reached at 800-432-3475 or by email at John@SteelMarketUpdate.com.
We will be busy taking registrations, filling the last few sponsor slots (I think there are now three left) and exhibitors (we have about 10 left) for the 2018 SMU Steel Summit Conference. You can get more details about the conference on our website: www.SteelMarketUpdate.com/events/steel-summit or you can contact us at info@SteelMarketUpdate.com with any questions you might have.
We also have about seven slots left for our March Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals workshop, which will be held just outside of Chicago on March 28-29. We will be touring the NLMK USA Portage, Ind., steel mill as part of our workshop.
Enjoy the game and we will be ready to serve you when it is over.
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
Another day, another massive gap between the news and market sentiment. On the news side, we’ve got war in the Middle East. The devastation facing western North Carolina coming into tragic focus. And the outcome of the presidential election remains a coin toss, according to current polling.
Final thoughts
There are markets where the headlines and the prices are both crazy. This does not appear to be one of them, at least not yet.
Final thoughts
Washington loomed large in our surveys this week. Two things actually: the upcoming presidential election and the trade case against imported coated products from 10 nations.
Final thoughts
Thanks to everyone who attended our Steel Hedging 101 workshop in Chicago on Wednesday. I learned a lot from StoneX Group’s Spencer Johnson, who instructs the course, and from your good questions. One thing that Spencer said sticks with me as I write this column. Namely, that momentum drives steel prices more than other commodity markets. If you watch steel futures, you’ll see up days and down days. But it’s rare to see the momentum shifting back and forth within any given day.
Final thoughts
SMU's prices ranges for flat-rolled steel were mostly sideways on Tuesday even as futures market shot higher. I got some questions as to why hot-rolled (HR) coil futures shot higher. As best as I can tell, it might have been in response to news that China plans to roll out stimulus measures. We have details on those measures here thanks to our colleagues at CRU. The chart below gives you some idea of just how sharply upward the move in HR futures was earlier on Tuesday: