Analysis
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
January 3, 2020
For those of you who stretched out the Christmas, Hanukkah and New Year’s Holidays and are just returning to your offices – Happy New Year and welcome to the decade that promises to make the last 10 years look tame.
Steel Market Update will return to our normal market analysis schedule this week, and we will publish our hot rolled, cold rolled, galvanized, Galvalume and plate indices on Tuesday evening.
Our Price Momentum Indicators are all pointing to higher prices on all flat rolled and plate products as the New Year begins. With the loss of IH4 BOF at ArcelorMittal Indiana Harbor along with the moves U.S. Steel has been making to take excess capacity off-line, the question as we enter the New Year will be: Has enough capacity been removed to impact enough supply in order to tighten the market?
On Monday, we will be asking that question and others that we feel are key to understanding the trends impacting the pricing of various steel products. If you receive an invitation to participate, please take a look and share your thoughts. No individual or company is ever identified. On Friday of this week, those who participated in our market trends analysis will be sent a link to our PowerPoint presentation, which breaks out a large portion of the responses and puts the data collected into a historical perspective.
This PowerPoint presentation is also made available to our Premium level members who have access to all the historical presentations on our website.
SMU is working on collecting service center inventories, shipment and other pertinent data from the flat rolled and plate steel distributors in the United States. A portion of this data is shared with our Premium level members. If you would like to learn more about how you can get access to this data, or if you are a steel service center and would like to participate in providing data, please contact Estelle.Tran@crugroup.com
I highly encourage those of you who have Executive level subscriptions to upgrade to our Premium level services. Premium members receive complete access to the data contained in our website. They receive issues of the Steel Market Update newsletter that are dedicated to Premium members only. Besides the two examples (Survey PowerPoint Presentations and Service Center Inventories/Shipment Data) there are numerous analytical products such as the Key Market Indicators, which we are sharing with all of our readers in this evening’s Executive issue. If you go to our website and look at the drop-down screens, you will see items listed with a (P) after the listing. Those are for Premium members only. You can learn more by sending an email to info@SteelMarketUpdate.com
I am in California today through Thursday of this week as we conduct one of our Steel 101 workshops. Paige Mayhair will also be in California with me. If you have any questions about your membership, need help with our website, or wish to become a new subscriber, please contact Brett Linton at 770-299-9897 or by email: Brett@SteelMarketUpdate.com
Our next Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals Workshop will be held just outside of Chicago in Merrillville, Ind., on March 31 and April 1, 2020. We will be touring the NLMK Portage, Ind., steel mill as part of this workshop.
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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