Features

SMU Community Chat: CRU analysts Thais Terzian and Frank Nikolic on Wednesday, July 9
Written by Michael Cowden
June 26, 2025
CRU analysts Thais Terzian and Frank Nikolic will be the featured guests on the next SMU Community Chat on Wednesday, July 9, at 11 am ET.
The live webinar is free for anyone to attend. A recording will be available to SMU subscribers. You can register here.
What we’ll talk about
Terzian is principal analyst, steel, at CRU. She’ll focus on metallics, semi-finished goods, and developments across steel markets in Americas. In other words, we’ll discuss not only the North American steel market (as we usually do) but also developments in South America – and how they impact markets here.
Nikolic is vice president of base and battery metals for CRU. We’ll delve into what’s happening in those markets with a particular focus on zinc – a key raw material for anyone in the galvanized steel market.
CRU is SMU’s parent company. And both Terzian and Nikolic bring a wealth of knowledge to the issues that matter to you. They’ll also be speaking at SMU Steel Summit. (The agenda for Summit is here. And you can register here.) So think of this as a preview of what they’ll discuss in Atlanta – and a good way to get the conversation going before Summit kicks off on Monday, Aug. 25.
As always, we’ll keep it to about 45 minutes. You can drop in, learn something – and then get on with your day. We’ll take your questions too. So remember to think of some good ones for the Q&A on Wednesday, July 9, at 11 am ET!
Editor’s note
If you’d like to see past Community Chat webinars, you can find those here. I suggest checking out a good one we did on June 25 with Ken Simonson, chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC). We discussed the impact of President Trump’s tariffs, immigration crackdown, and (proposed) tax cuts on construction.

Michael Cowden
Read more from Michael CowdenLatest in Features

Apparent steel supply remained high in May
The volume of finished steel entering the US market remained elevated in May, in line with April figures, according to SMU’s analysis of Department of Commerce and American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) data

June service center shipments and inventories report
Flat rolled = 55.8 shipping days of supply Plate = 59.4 shipping days of supply Flat rolled US service centers’ flat-rolled steel supply edged down in June with a modest boost to shipments month on month (m/m). At the end of June, US service centers carried 55.8 shipping days of flat roll supply, down from […]

Final Thoughts
Is outer space steel's final frontier?

Final Thoughts
President Trump’s tariff policies have a lot more in common with a roundabout than you’d think.

Timna Tanners joins Wells Fargo as managing director, equity research
Mining metals analyst Timna Tanners has joined Wells Fargo as managing director of equity research, according to a post on her LinkedIn profile.