Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
November 25, 2019
Steel Market Update will not publish on Thursday, Nov. 28, or Sunday, Dec. 1, due to the Thanksgiving Holiday. Our offices will be closed on Friday, Nov. 29, and will reopen on Monday, Dec. 2.
Our early December flat rolled and plate steel market trends survey will begin on Monday, Dec. 2. We will also go out to our service center data providers for their inventory and shipment information on Monday.
I will be traveling to New Orleans on Dec. 7-10 to attend the annual HARDI conference. As many of you are aware, I have been participating in the HARDI steel conference call for a couple of decades, and I speak at their conference. I am looking forward to seeing my wholesaler friends in NOLA.
My next trip after New Orleans will be to Ontario, Calif., where SMU will be conducting one of our Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals Workshops. The workshop still has plenty of seats available. We will be touring the California Steel Industries (CSI) steel mill as part of our workshop. Our instructors include two metallurgists (Walburn & McDaniels), one sales and consulting expert (Simon), one purchasing and consulting expert (Briccetti) and me with my 42 years of sales, purchasing, management, marketing, reporting and analytical experience. This workshop comes highly recommend by past attendees. You can find more information on our website: www.SteelMarketUpdate.com/Events/Steel101
We want to wish those in the United States a happy and healthy Thanksgiving Holiday with family and friends.
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!