Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by Tim Triplett
July 10, 2020
John Packard (who is traveling) says his sources are telling him that JSW’s flat roll mill in Mingo Junction, Ohio, may be shutting down (not taking orders) for an unknown amount of time. No confirmation or details yet from the company.
John also reports that Steel Dynamics ran the first coil through the new #3 galvanizing line at its mill in Columbus, Miss., last week. SDI announced in June 2018 that it planned to invest $140 million to add a third galvanizing line at its Columbus Flat Roll Division. The new galvanizing line has an annual coating capability of 400,000 tons.
The coronavirus pandemic has been dominating the headlines since mid-March. Public opinion seems to have vacillated between panic and indifference from one week to the next. Within the steel industry, views have evolved dramatically over the past few months as seen in the charts below.
In May when we asked readers how quickly they thought business would return to pre-COVID levels, this was the distribution of responses to SMU’s market trends questionnaire. The majority saw the virus running its course by the end of July, and almost all by the end of the year. Only 7 percent acknowledged the crisis could extend into next year.
This week’s responses reveal a much more sobering outlook, with 43 percent anticipating the virus will impact their businesses into the first or even second quarter of 2021.
As disconcerting as the pandemic is, especially with reports of surges in various parts of the country this week, we know a lot more about the virus than we did a couple months ago and can now make more informed and realistic plans on how to deal with it.
Andre Marshall, president and founder of Crunch Risk, LLC, will offer his insights on how the coronavirus is impacting the steel futures market as the featured speaker during SMU’s next Community Chat webinar this Wednesday, July 15. The webinar begins at 11 a.m. ET and is free to anyone in the industry. Click here to register.
Registrations continue to grow for the 2020 SMU Virtual Steel Summit Conference For more information visit www.SteelMarketUpdate.com and click on the SMU Virtual Steel Summit link. Or to register, click here.
As always, your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
Tim Triplett, Executive Editor
Tim Triplett
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Final Thoughts
I’m trying to make sure this is not a TL;DR Final Thoughts. As a journalism school professor once told me, ‘No one but your mom reads more than 1,000 words.’ Also, as the old adage goes, a picture is worth a thousand as well. With that in mind, below are a couple of charts that I think go a long way toward explaining how prices and lead times have been relatively stable despite concerns about demand.
Final Thoughts
It’s another week of big headlines for the world writ large – an expanding war in the Middle East, another potentially catastrophic hurricane – and not much going on in the world of steel prices. “Call me Stevie Wonder, I see nothing.” That’s how one service center executive described the current sheet market. There seems to be almost a competition among some of our Community Chat guests and contributors to outdo each other in flowery ways to say, “
Final Thoughts
Surprise, surprise. Forget Halloween, the trend this October is all around the unexpected. Known as the “October Surprise,” you never know what is in store for you in the month before a US presidential election. Still, if we pull back the dial back date-wise a little bit, a familiar theme has been added to the mix: kick the can.
Final Thoughts
Another day, another massive gap between the news and market sentiment. On the news side, we’ve got war in the Middle East. The devastation facing western North Carolina coming into tragic focus. And the outcome of the presidential election remains a coin toss, according to current polling.
Final thoughts
There are markets where the headlines and the prices are both crazy. This does not appear to be one of them, at least not yet.