Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
May 4, 2018
Some quick housekeeping regarding this week’s schedule. On Monday I will be going out with two requests via email. The first will be for those service centers who participate in our service center inventories index. I hope to have those emails out to each of the distributors between 7:30 and 8:30 AM ET.
Around 9 AM ET we will be sending a single page newsletter to all our members. Embedded in the article will be a link to a short questionnaire. We request that everyone spend just a few minutes to click on the link and respond to our inquiries. There are going to be changes coming to Steel Market Update as we gear up for a period of growth. We want to make sure that we continue to offer the services enjoyed by our readers and to develop content based on your needs.
On Thursday Tim Triplett and I will be at the Hyatt in Chicago for the Metal Industry Boy Scout Dinner. We look forward to seeing many of our customers there and meeting some new people who have not yet been introduced to Steel Market Update. If you would like to speak with us prior to the dinner, please send one of us and email: Tim@SteelMarketUpdate.com or John@SteelMarketUpdate.com. We should be in the hotel shortly after 2 PM CT.
I want to take a moment to thank Lewis Leibowitz for all of the time and energy he has been putting into the almost daily trade updates he has been doing for Steel Market Update over the past few weeks. If you have questions for Lewis that cannot wait until our conference at the end of August when he will be at our SMU Steel Summit 2018, you can send them to me and I will forward them on to Lewis along with comments/questions that I might have on the same subject. As I said, Lewis will be at our conference for all three days (Aug 27-29) and he is kicking off our Pre-Summit program on Monday, August 27th at 1:30 PM ET.
Philip Bell of the Steel Manufacturers Association will also be speaking to our conference and I hope that Mr. Bell will be available during the entire conference. He will be speaking on a slightly different topic than what many of you might expect from him, or, may have heard him speak to in the past.
We will also have Grant Aldonas, former Under-Secretary of Commerce during the Bush Administration. Aldonas was intimately involved the last time we had restrictions on steel (Section 201).
If you have trade-related issues our conference will be helpful to you and your company in many ways – including networking with other companies facing the same issues as you.
If there are others in the industry that you think might benefit from attending our conference please send them our way. If they have questions I am personally available to speak with them. They can reach me at 800-432-3475.
You can learn more about this year’s conference on our website: www.SteelMarketUpdate.com/Events/Steel-Summit or by contacting our offices 772-932-7538 or my office: 800-432-3475.
Our Memphis Steel 101 workshop is SOLD OUT and we are adding people to a wait list should we get any cancellations. I will have more about where our next Steel 101 workshop will be (we are working on something special…) in the coming days. Stay tuned.
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
SMU has heard from some larger buyers who have stepped back into the market to buy at prices that, if not at a bottom, they assess to be close to one. Is it enough to stretch out lead times and send prices upward again? Or do we continue to scrape along the mid-$600s per short ton (st) as we have been doing for most of the last month?
Final thoughts
Cleveland-Cliffs Chairman, President and CEO Lourenco Goncalves had some insightful things to say today about the steel market and about a conference we suspect might be Steel Summit.
Final thoughts
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, when you add in some commentary from respected peers in the steel industry to those pictures, that may shoot you up to five thousand words, at least. In that spirit, we’ve added some snapshots from our market survey this week, along with some comments from market participants.
Final thoughts
I thought we’d have more clarity this week on Section 232, Mexico, and a potential carve-out for steel melted and poured in Brazil. As of right now, the only official comment I have is from the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR).
Final thoughts
There are just 40 days left until the 2024 SMU Steel Summit gets underway on Aug. 26 at the Georgia International Convention Center (GICC) in Atlanta. And I’m pleased to announce that it's official now: More than 1,000 people have registered to at attend! Another big development: The desktop version of the networking app for the event has officially launched!