Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
October 4, 2019
I will be out of the office this entire week traveling first to Cincinnati as we conduct our sold-out Steel 101 workshop on Tuesday and Wednesday. Later in the week I will be traveling to Minnesota (where I see temperatures are supposed to be in the 30’s for highs) for a Board of Trustees meeting for Hamline University.
On Monday, SMU will send out invitations to participate in our early October flat rolled and plate steel market trends survey. Invitations will go out at 8 a.m. ET. If you receive an invitation, please take a few minutes to answer the first question at the end of the email, which will then take you to the entire questionnaire. If you used to get an invitation, and for some reason they have stopped – check your SPAM folder.
If you would like to be added to the invitation list, please send your request to info@SteelMarketUpdate.com.
We will send out our Service Center Inventories and Shipments “Flash Report” on Monday. There are some surprises contained in the report, which is provided only to data providers. The full report, which is provided to both data providers and our Premium level members, will be available on Oct. 14. If you are a service center who inventories prime flat rolled or plate steel products in the United States, and you would like to participate in our monthly analysis by providing your company’s data on a confidential basis, please contact me at John@SteelMarketUpdate.com or Estelle.Tran@crugroup.com. If you are an Executive level member and you would like to receive our breakdown of Service Center Shipments and Inventories data, please contact Paige Mayhair at Paige@SteelMarketUpdate.com
Registration is open for our January 2020 Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals Workshop, which will be held in Ontario, Calif. (Los Angeles area) on Jan. 7-8. Included will be a tour of the California Steel Industries (CSI) steel mill. Details can be found on our website: www.SteelMarketUpdate.com/Events/Steel101
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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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!