Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
January 18, 2019
It’s football night in North America, so I don’t know how many late Sunday night readers I will have. Hopefully, your team won, and all is well with the world.
We have closed registrations for the end of January Steel 101 workshop. Our next workshop will be in Baytown, Texas, (just outside of Houston) and we will tour the JSW Baytown plate and pipe mills. I will have more details on the final date and exact location later this week.
Over the weekend, a local NPR station produced an article about President Trump’s steel “wall” and I was used as one of their sources in the final story. You can read the full story here: http://www.witf.org/news/2019/01/how-a-steel-border-wall-and-the-shutdown-it-caused-impacts-the-steel-industry.php
We will begin rolling out some of our SMU Steel Summit Conference speakers and providing early glimpses into pieces of our program starting this week. Registration is open as is hotel registration for the Gateway area hotels. You can find information about the conference on our website: www.SteelMarketUpdate.com/Events/Steel-Summit and you can use the following link to go directly to the registration form.
We will begin our mid-January flat rolled and steel plate market trends analysis at 8 AM ET on Monday morning. If you receive an invitation, please take a few minutes to answer the first question, which is at the end of the invitation email, and you will then be taken to the balance of the questionnaire. If you would like to participate in our questionnaire, send an email to John@SteelMarketUpdate.com
As always, your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, President & CEO

John Packard
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