Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
October 5, 2020
I began writing Steel Market Update as a way to use my experience and relationships from my 31 years of sales and management within the steel industry in order to assist the industry to make better buy/sell decisions. I wanted SMU to be a source of quality information as we ask the targeted questions of active industry sources, produced proprietary data and analysis, and add insights based on what we are seeing and hearing from active steel buyers and sellers on a daily basis. It was never my intention to make decisions for those actively involved, but to be a provider of market intelligence from which you can add your own experiences, your own market intelligence as well as data from other trusted sources within the greater steel and economic communities.
Over the years SMU expanded our publications, added steel training classes on how steel is made and sold (Steel 101: Introduction to Steel Making & Market Fundamentals and Steel 201), on HRC and scrap futures trading, and we produced the SMU Steel Summit Conference. More recently we have added free SMU Community Chat Webinars in order to help keep everyone in the industry aware of pressing issues affecting the steel industry.
We will be hosting a new free Community Chat webinar on Wednesday (Oct 7) at 11 a.m. ET with Timna Tanners, Metals and Mining Analyst at Bank of America. I will also be making a few statements prior to Timna. You can register for the webinar by clicking here or by going to www.SteelMarketUpdate.com/blog/smu-community-chat-webinars
We are working on some new events for the 2021 calendar (besides the 2021 SMU Steel Summit Conference, which is scheduled to be in person in Atlanta on Aug. 23-25) and I will discuss these new events as they get closer.
A reminder that our 2020 SMU Virtual Steel Summit Conference had 913 registered attendees. We are hoping to conduct the 2021 conference live and at the Georgia International Convention Center (GICC), which is located adjacent to the Atlanta International Airport (ATL).
Our scrap data providers are telling us early indications are for scrap to trade sideways for the month of October. The early deals are just now getting done at sideways (no increase/no decrease). There is a chance some of the prime deals may be sightly higher when all is said and done. However, at this moment it appears scrap is a little weaker than expected. We will have more details in Thursday’s issue of SMU.
As always, your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.
John Packard, President & CEO
John Packard
Read more from John PackardLatest in Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Can technology help with pig iron and DRI/HBI tariffs?
Final Thoughts
Tariff-related noise aside, there is one basic factor keeping buyers on the sidelines. Despite recent declines, HR prices remain at historically high levels. And there is no obvious support to keep them there.
Final Thoughts
United Airlines raised eyebrows earlier this month when it provided two forecasts for 2025 – one assuming a relatively stable economy and another assuming a recession. The reason? Uncertainty around the impact of President Trump’s policy shocks on the broader economy. And it sometimes feels like we’re seeing a battle between those two narratives (stable vs recession) play out within in the pages of this newsletter.
Final Thoughts
Despite some scary headlines lately (especially about Trump potentially firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell) this is not October 2008 (financial crisis) or March 2020 (onset of the pandemic). But it sure seems like we’ve taken a relatively strong economy and poured a thick sauce of uncertainty over it.
Final Thoughts
I put some of our survey data through ChatGpt, with interesting results.