Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Written by John Packard
September 19, 2014
For those who are keeping track I will be in Arkansas tomorrow for the Big River Steel groundbreaking. It will be interesting to see for myself what all the fuss is about… More about the groundbreaking (and maybe some of the fuss) in Tuesday evening’s issue of SMU.
We have also been working on a special report on zinc as we believe the subject will be of keen interest to those of you who are buying galvanized, galvannealed, galfan or other coated products which use zinc to coat hot rolled or cold rolled substrate. We have warned our readers in the past that zinc pricing bears watching in the coming months.
We still have a couple of seats left for our next Steel 101 workshop which will be held in Ft. Wayne, IN on October 7 & 8. We will tour the SDI Butler, IN steel mill as part of our program. You can find our program, pricing and how to register on our website or, you are welcome to contact our offices at: 800-432-3475. We will close registration at the end of this week and start working on our next Steel 101 program which will be held in late January in South Carolina and will include a tour of the Nucor Berkeley steel mill.
I want to thank all of the steel mills who have worked with Steel Market Update and have allowed our Steel 101 training workshop to tour their facilities: NLMK USA, Severstal (both Dearborn – now AK Steel and Columbus – now SDI), SSAB, California Steel, ArcelorMittal Dofasco, Steel Dynamics and Nucor. We hope other mills will consider working with Steel Market Update and our educational program(s) in the future. I
I am going to keep it short this evening. Thank you again for your business which is truly appreciated by all of us at Steel Market Update.
John Packard
Read more from John PackardLatest in Final Thoughts
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.
Final Thoughts
Nearly 50% of respondents to our latest survey thought hot-rolled coil prices have already peaked. And where will those prices be two months from now? Responses were decidedly split on that question.
Final Thoughts
A modest week-to-week change in HR price understates a huge swing in expectations.
Final Thoughts
What happens when ChatGPT meets SMU's Market Chatter? No, this is not an idea for the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Then again, with what Hollywood is putting out these days, Chatter Meets Chat might just turn out to be a hit. Rather, it’s that old idea of putting theory into practice. Recently, I conducted an interview with Doug Schrock, managing principal of AI at public accounting and consulting firm Crowe. He gave some tips on how to implement AI into your business.